Comment by ben_w

1 day ago

> who is left on facebook aside from dopamine junkies and bots.

Political activists, like a former partner of mine.

… who I mute, because I am a British person living in Berlin, I don't need or want "Demexit Memes" and similar groups, which is 90% of what they post …

… which in turn means that sometimes when I visit Facebook, my feed is actually empty, because nobody else is posting anything …

… which is still an improvement on when the algorithm decides to fill it up with junk, as the algorithm shows me people I don't know doing things I don't care abut interspersed with adverts for stuff I can't use (for all they talk about the "value" of the ads, I get ads both for dick pills and boob surgery, and tax advisors for a country I don't live in who specialise in helping people renounce I nationality I never had in the first place, and sometimes ads I not only can't read but can't even pronounce because they're in cyrillic).

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ben_w

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p_ing  20 hours ago

> I get ads both for dick pills and boob surgery

There is some percentage of the world-wide population that would find interest in both ads simultaneously.

  • ben_w  20 hours ago

    While true (you're not the first to suggest it, even), in the context of the other things they show, I think it is more likely to be an example of them not knowing which advertiser to pitch my eyeballs at, and less likely to be them identifying me as a member of this set.

naravara  1 day ago

I take poorly directed targeting advertisements as a performance indicator for how well my data privacy efforts are working. When the ad targeting has you dead to rights is when you need to worry.

  • ben_w  1 day ago

    To an extent, sure, but I think also a sign their analytics were never as good as they claimed.

    For example, so far as I know my name is strongly gendered male, so why the boob surgery ads?