"With intent, they can find product and services that you might be interested in. "The FB AI engine can determine intent from textual and visual material you provide," notes tech industry veteran Phil Lieberman. Facebook's algorithm figured, since she was with her friend of a similar age and both had children, that Michelle would be equally interested in a brand the mom had liked once it deduced that both were in the same geographic location together-where the friend's Joymode subscription was actively in use.Īnd if she had posted photos from the party on Instagram, more data clues could have been collected to solidify the interest connection. However, here's our translation, with an assist from Court. That offers no real clarity on why it showed up when it did. Michelle saw the ad because Joymode wanted to reach "people who may be similar to their customers," and people over 18 who live in Los Angeles. The answer was written in marketing speak. (Three dots at the top right of the page.) In the case of Michelle's Joymode ad, we asked Facebook point blank to help us decipher how this happened, and it sent us to the "Why you're seeing this ad," feature that's included in the menu of all Facebook ads. "They put all sorts of circumstantial evidence together, and you're marketed to as if they're listening to your conversations." "It's like they're stalking you," says Court. Instead, it uses sophisticated demographic and location data to serve up ads. The truth is, Facebook tracks us in ways many of us don't even realize and is so good at it, we think it's monitoring our conversations. "Facebook is eavesdropping on you," says Jamie Court, the president of Los Angeles-based Consumer Watchdog nonprofit. So why do these ads keep appearing there with regularity, and why are so many people convinced Facebook isn't telling the truth? "But I recognize you're not gonna really believe me." "(W)e don't look at your messages, we don't listen in on your microphone, doing so would be super problematic for a lot of different reasons," Mosseri insisted in the CBS interview. Well, Mosseri and the company deny that persistent perception every which way to Tuesday. "I haven't searched for it, I haven't talked to anybody about it." "Can you help me understand how I can be having a private conversation with someone about something I'm interested in seeing or buying, and an advertisement for that will pop up on my Instagram feed," King asked. "I swear I think you guys are listening." That's how CBS This Morning host Gayle King put it just this week when she spoke with Adam Mosseri who heads up Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. Does Facebook really listen to our conversations to serve us ads? When she told me about it, we both wondered whether the urban legend could be true.
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