ProPublica reveals mechanisms behind Facebook

By KAREN PARKER | County Line Editor

Ah, in just a few more days, the most obnoxious American presidential campaign in history will grind to its merciful end. The racket has been so loud for so long that other news has quietly come and gone with barely a whisper.

One of the best stories you may have missed is news about Facebook from ProPublica, an independent nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. ProPublica is no amateur outfit. It won a Pulitzer Prize in 2010 and is staffed by some of the most highly regarded journalists, including its current executive chair, Paul Steiger, former Wall Street Journal publisher.

For those of you who think Facebook is just an innocent exercise in neighborliness, guess again. You may just be sharing photos of the grandchildren or enshrining your latest meal or vacation, but the folks behind Facebook have found a bushel basket of ways to make money off your urge to take the stage and broadcast your affairs.

According to ProPublica, Facebook has a particularly comprehensive set of dossiers on its more than two billion members. Every time a Facebook member likes a post, tags a photo, updates his or her favorite movies, posts a comment about a politician, or changes his or her relationship status, Facebook logs it. Facebook also collects information about all of the pages you visited that contain Facebook sharing buttons.

Do you use Instagram or WhatsApp on your phone? Both are owned by Facebook, and they contribute more data to Facebook’s dossier.

Facebook also buys data about its users’ mortgages, car ownership and shopping habits from some of the biggest commercial data brokers.

Facebook uses all of this data to offer marketers a chance to target ads to increasingly specific groups of people. Indeed, Facebook offers advertisers more than 1,300 categories for ad targeting — everything from people whose property size is less than .26 acres to households with exactly seven credit cards.

You may be thinking, so what? I have nothing to hide. And you probably don’t. But think about this: Never in the history of mankind has it been possible for a company to assemble so much data about its users while those users are totally unaware of it.

And while you may not like the way those creepy ads follow you around the Web, you would perhaps like it even less knowing some of your information is being tagged by the government. Facebook has more than 1,300 categories it can slot you into and then sell that information to marketers or perhaps others.

For example, consider that pressure cooker you bought last summer to help you deal with the tomato excess. You could fashion that into a nifty bomb capable of taking out, oh, for example, a lot of runners at the Boston Marathon. Wouldn’t you just love being hauled into an FBI office and quizzed about that?

Ever wonder what Facebook has on you. Go to ProPublica’s website (www.propublica.org) and download the app that will tell you all the information available on you at Facebook. Some things may be so far off the mark you will find it hilarious; others are so close to the truth it may make you feel uneasy.

Most of us feel like yawning when the discussion turns to algorithms and the ways they are used in the tech field. But are you aware that every website you visit is created, literally, the moment you arrive. Each element of the page — the pictures, the ads, the text, the comments — live on computers in different places and are sent to your device when you request them.

Individualized shopping means you don’t waste time looking at things in which you have no interest. But the system is now so sophisticated that you also get a price especially designed for you.

Imagine if you opened this newspaper and found an ad for guns from Hardware Hank with a price for folks living south of Wilton and a different price for those living north of town.

Last year ProPublica found that the Princeton Review was charging different prices for its online SAT tutoring course in different ZIP codes. In some zip codes, the course cost $6,600; in others, that same course was offered for as much as $8,400.

Oddly enough, Asian-Americans were more than twice as likely to pay more than other ethnic groups.

That brings us to racial discrimination on Facebook advertising. Users cannot target customers only by interests and background; they can now target them by what they call “ethnic affinities.”Facebook ads can exclude people based on race, gender and other sensitive factors.

If a newspaper did this, the heavy hand of the Department of Justice would soon slam down with the full force of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Facebook told ProPublica that its policies “prohibit advertisers from using the targeting options for discrimination, harassment, disparagement or predatory advertising practices.”

It’s all in the interest of helping businesses analyze the effectiveness of their ad campaigns.

Sure it is.

Oddly enough, Facebook refused to answer questions as to why an ad for housing eliminating minority groups was accepted within 15 minutes.

It’s a brave new world, and already many European countries have established laws to control what ProPublica calls “injustice by algorithm.”

Anyone know what the Clinton or Trump policy is on this issue?

Nope, we spent all our time on Hillary’s email and Donald’s scandalous sex life.

Hmm, maybe we do get the government we deserve.

 

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