Facebook Ad Targeting

From Futurism - Facebook Allegedly Detected When Teen Girls Deleted Selfies So It Could Serve Them Beauty Ads

Often when people think about ad tracking, they downplay it, thinking these companies are just tracking their online shopping and browsing to make recommendations on purchases, but it goes far deeper than that. This outlineds the far nastier things that they exploit with people all to maximize profits.

Though Facebook’s ad algorithms are notoriously opaque, in 2017 The Australian alleged that the company had crafted a pitch deck for advertisers bragging that it could exploit “moments of psychological vulnerability” in its users by targeting terms like “worthless,” “insecure,” “stressed,” “defeated,” “anxious,” “stupid,” “useless,” and “like a failure.”

This isn’t the first report of this, and likely won’t be the last. Why doesn’t this change? Facebook made $164.5 billion in revenue in 2024.

“This is what puts money in all our pockets.”

Much if this information is from Careless People, a book from a former employee at Facebook, which Facebook has tried to legally prevent from ever getting published.

Remember, if you think an online product is “free”, you’re the product, not the customer.

Makes you wonder what a company could (would) do if they had the infinite money spigot turned on, hyper charged with AI…