Surprise! Facebook’s ad targeting makes people uncomfortable, study says

It turns out that most people aren’t actually comfortable with Facebook’s ad targeting practices.

That may sound like an obvious conclusion in the wake of Cambridge Analytica and numerous other privacy scandals, but new research makes clear just how much people dislike the mechanics of Facebook’s ad platform.

A new survey from Pew Research, which surveyed 963 adult Facebook users, found that 51 percent are uncomfortable with the social network’s practice of sorting users into categories for advertising purposes. 

Some context: A big part of Facebook’s multibillion dollar ad machine is its ability to automatically categorize its 2 billion users into groups that advertisers can then target. There are hundreds of ad categories, ranging from broad characteristics like demographic information, to more specific traits, such as whether you recently started a relationship or plan on buying a car. Facebook, like other social networks, lets you view what groups it’s sorted you into and opt out of them, but the option to do so is buried within it ad preference settings.  Read more…

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