| I love tinkering with various ad personalization settings and ad-blocking technologies just to see how it changes the ads I see. Facebook (including Instagram) is my favorite. For the most part, when you tell it to stop personalizing your ads beyond basic information, it obliges, although it does try to make that process difficult. If you disable most targeted advertising on Facebook/Instagram, you’re going to see generic ads targeting the average person in your region—and it’s enlightening to see what those ads are. As you move between regions, the ads change dramatically. Where I live, the ads I get are pretty mundane. However, visiting family members less than two hours away yields some interesting results. They’re in a relatively poor, conservative part of an otherwise affluent and liberal state, so there’s a lot of inequality and frustration. Violence and drugs are rampant, and the police seem to love exacerbating the social problems in the region. What sort of ads do I get there when I have personalization disabled? Pretty much exactly what you described, although a bit less cult-oriented and more on the blatantly-violent side. Want to test this out for yourself? Head to Facebook and remove yourself from all advertising lists and disable any personalization that you can. Then, head to the Facebook Marketplace. Set the location radius relatively small and move the location around a bit; assuming they haven’t changed it, you’ll see ads targeted to the average demographic in that location. It works best when current events are causing a significant political divide; for example, there were some fascinating ads around January 6, 2021. |