[xefer]

How many people are aware that the list of interests directing Facebook ads are easily visible and editable?

Settings | Ads | Your Interests

It's really interesting to see the full scope of the interests FB has gathered over time. Some of them are pretty hilarious.

They have a seemingly huge ontology of every subject you could think of. If you methodically go through an remove every interest, the ads suddenly become very generic - stuff targeted to, say, age group and/or location. Since removing everything, and periodically clearing it all out, I generally only see stuff for things like real estate and car dealerships, which don't really mean much for me.

[macNchz]

I found Facebook’s idea of what my hobbies are to be particularly amusing: https://m.imgur.com/nWCWn63

It’s unclear where they got those from, or why those are even allowed to be considered hobbies.

I don’t use Facebook much these days, but I’ve had an account for nearly 13 years, I use Instagram regularly and they surely have lots of tracking pixel data on me...so I was suprised at how poorly they’d inferred my interests (the other categories were less farcical but not especially accurate).

[jp555]

Generally people only consider ads that “don’t mean much to me” as ads. If they do mean something to someone they suddenly cease being ads to that person. It’s a weird thing.

[dhoulb]

I did the same and filled it with things that are relevant to me, and now my ads are generally enjoyable — things I might not have otherwise known about.

There was a lot of cruft in there from the early days when it was easy to like everything. But after the cleanout my ads are definitely better.