Survey: Few know Facebook collected details to target ads

Nearly 9 in 10 Americans find social media giant created material for them on ad preferences page.

Facebook keeps a running list of things it has learned about you for advertisers. These lists have been public for a while.

But it has been trickier to know exactly how the public feels about this information. When the Pew Research Center set out to examine that question, it found that 74 percent of Americans didn’t even know that the list existed, until the survey instructed them on how to view it.

The findings

Nearly 9 in 10 (88 percent) Americans found that Facebook had generated some material for them on the ad preferences page, and 6 in 10 had 10 or more interests listed for them. Overall, 59 percent said that those interests were accurate, that they reflected who they were in real life. (By contrast, 27 percent said the interests were not very or at all accurate.)

Once they had a chance to view this list, a slim majority — 51 percent — were not comfortable with Facebook collecting this information about them, according to the report, which was released Wednesday.

Why it matters

“We consistently find that there’s a paradox at the center of generalized privacy research,” said Lee Rainie, director of Internet and technology research at Pew. “Americans, being Americans, say that it matters, but they behave in a way that doesn’t indicate that it matters.”

The survey was conducted in 2018, several months after Facebook suspended Cambridge Ana- lytica for improperly collecting data from Facebook users, a revelation that caused a major crisis of trust for the platform. The company announced that it would provide more information to users about how ads work on Facebook.

What’s next

The Pew data suggest that, even as Facebook becomes an increasing subject of concern for Americans, “no matter how much effort people make in disclosing what’s available and make it clear that users can make choices, everybody isn’t picking up on that,” Rainie said.

In a statement, Facebook said it believed “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.” Facebook added that it planned to host more in-person events on privacy this year and continue to make its ad settings “easier to use.”