Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Ad-profiles poll finds Facebook’s users unaware

- SAPNA MAHESHWARI

The scrutiny of Facebook’s collection and use of consumer data in recent years has prompted the tech giant to repeatedly defend its efforts around transparen­cy and privacy.

But about three-fourths of Facebook users were unaware that the company lists their personal traits and interests for advertiser­s on its site, according to a study published by the Pew Research Center on Wednesday.

Half of the users who looked at the Facebook page with that data — known as their “Ad Preference­s” — said they were not comfortabl­e with the company compiling that informatio­n. Pew conducted a nationally representa­tive survey of 963 U.S. adults with Facebook accounts between Sept. 4 and Oct. 1.

While consumers have learned more in recent years about how they are targeted for online ads, the study suggests that many still do not know how much of their behavior is tracked, where it is compiled or even that Facebook has a page that lists all of that informatio­n. Pew focused on Facebook, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, because it “plays an incredibly important role in the media ecosystem of the world,” said Lee Rainie, Pew’s director of Internet and technology research.

“Privacy matters to Americans — it’s a classic American value — yet when they’re online and doing other things, they act as if their personal informatio­n is OK to harvest and analyze,” Rainie said in an interview.

“One of the theories on this inconsiste­ncy is that Americans don’t really know what’s going on. The fact that 74 percent of Facebook users didn’t know that these lists were maintained on them cuts to the heart of that question of where Americans are, or are not, with these systems.”

About 88 percent of the users had listings on their Ad Preference­s page. The page says that it allows users to “learn what influences the ads you see and take control over your ad experience.”

“Pew’s findings underscore the importance of transparen­cy and control across the entire ad industry, and the need for more consumer education around the controls we place at people’s fingertips,” Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesman, said in a statement. “This year we’re doing more to make our settings easier to use and hosting more in-person events on ads and privacy.”

Targeted advertisin­g is the core of Facebook’s business, which brings in more than $40 billion in revenue each year. Through all the clicking, posting and article sharing, and activity elsewhere online, Facebook builds up an ad profile for each of its users. That includes informatio­n as basic as their ages and locations, as well as their hobbies, political leanings, family types and more. Advertiser­s use that informatio­n to direct tailored messages to users.

But questions around how that data can be misused to manipulate people — and how much they know about its collection in the first place — have put tech companies like Facebook on the defensive. Tech companies have responded by promoting tools that they say offer transparen­cy around their business practices, including Ad Preference­s and a similar product from Google called Ad Settings. In December, Facebook created a temporary kiosk in Bryant Park in Manhattan to provide consumers with informatio­n about privacy and ad targeting.

Pew’s survey also took a closer look at two of Facebook’s more controvers­ial user labels, which are determined by algorithms: political leanings and “multicultu­ral affinities.” (Facebook decides whether a user has an “affinity” for a minority group like black or Asian-American, which can then be used to target ads.)

Half of the survey’s respondent­s were assigned a political label, while one-fifth said that they were given a multicultu­ral affinity. Twentyseve­n percent of those with a political classifica­tion said that the label was “not very or not at all accurate.” With the multicultu­ral affinities, 37 percent said they “did not have a strong affinity or interest” in the group that they were assigned.

“One of the debates we’ve seen a lot is, how do we judge the performanc­e of algorithms?” Rainie said. “One line of thought in the technology community, and particular­ly the critics’ community, is it ought to be 100 percent — if you’re going to judge the way the world works, you ought to be pretty accurate. The counterarg­ument is that the test for an algorithm is: Does it do a better job than human beings at figuring out the way the world works?”

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