The “listening” of Facebook and Google is more pervasive than you think

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Yet another consumer is bothered by the rough algorithms implemented by Facebook. Here’s how the app knows what you’re talking about and what to do about it.

Image: Chesnot / Getty Images

Last weekend, my mother-in-law came to visit us. During her stay, something happened that worried her a lot.

Let me set the stage.

Everyone was gathered around the dining room table, having a great time. One of the guys came up with a new product that he uses in his salon. My mother-in-law, being a stylist herself, asked me to look up the price of the product, so I grabbed my phone and started looking for it. With the assignment completed, I put down the phone and didn’t think twice.

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The next morning, my mother-in-law was quite upset when she opened Facebook on her Samsung Galaxy phone to see an advertisement for that product in her feed. At breakfast, she was convinced that (both?) Facebook or Google were listening to her the night before. After all, how could they have known she was curious about the product? He didn’t look for it on his phone.

This put the whole family on a rather conspiratorial trajectory until I stepped in to explain what had happened. Here is my explanation.

Facebook is very good at some things (some we approve of and some we don’t). One of these things Facebook is exceptionally good at is making connections. I’m not necessarily talking about the kind of connection that unites two people to share the stories of their lives, but rather, connecting the underlying points between people.

You see, Facebook knows my mother-in-law and I are friends on the platform. They also know how to track us down. So when Facebook “saw” that we were in the same position, it connected those particular spots. And when I searched for the product on my phone, Facebook’s algorithm decided it was smart to place an ad on both of our phones for the product I had been looking for.

But it’s a little more complex than that.

Facebook (like so many other companies) is so good at tracking our behavior that its algorithm was able to piece together a very unique puzzle that went something like this:

I searched for a hairdressing product. My mother-in-law and I are friends on Facebook. My mother-in-law searched for hairdressing products on her phone. Ergo, my mother-in-law would benefit from seeing an ad for the product I researched.

It could have gone one of two ways: Facebook could have run the algorithm on every friend associated with my Facebook account or it could have restricted it to only friends I had been in close contact with for X days. Either way, it shows the depth to which the company is willing to extract information from users and use it to gain an advantage.

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But as we’ve seen in this example, these types of targeted ads can easily backfire on Facebook (and any business). When my mother-in-law saw the ad, she immediately worried that Facebook was “listening” to her. For this reason, he would never have dared to click on that ad, for fear that it might be some kind of scam.

Good for my mother-in-law to have the right amount of knowledge to not trust everything she sees on the internet.

A problem with a solution that no company wants

This is where the real problem comes in. The activity of such deep algorithmic monitoring is harming and helping companies. It’s useful because it makes advertising a lot easier. Businesses no longer have to spend days or weeks trying to figure out where to best spend their advertising money or who to turn to.

At the same time, it is seriously damaging the level of trust consumers place in advertisements. Consider this: Most consumers don’t like ads. They don’t. This is especially true of online ads. They are intrusive, loud, often irrelevant (regardless of what the algorithm says), and can even lead to malicious attacks. To make matters worse, when situations arise like I’ve seen over the weekend, consumers get scared to the point that they believe companies are using their devices to listen to them.

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Those consumers are not far from the target.

It all adds up to the average consumer who wants nothing to do with ads. Unfortunately, most large companies are immersed in the game of algorithms and unwilling to back down (no matter how much it damages their reputation).

The best way to fix this is to get rid of the algorithms and this won’t happen. It’s the solution no company wants. And no matter how good an algorithm is, it will still lead to such problems because, although machine learning may be faster than humans, it lacks some qualities (empathy, reason, common sense) that make human interaction crucial for connection. between businesses and consumers. No matter how popular algorithms become, they will never measure up to their human counterparts. Never. They may be faster, they may be cheaper, and they may be more quantifiable, but they will never be as qualified.

Unfortunately, companies like Facebook will never understand or learn from a situation like the one I experienced over the weekend. They don’t understand how most people are actually afraid that a company can “listen” to their lives and make decisions based on what they “hear.”

Companies like Facebook do no favors in making it very difficult for users to get even a semblance of privacy with the platform. The mobile app does not clarify how to prevent tracking. To do this you need to go to Settings and Privacy | Activity outside Facebook. Within that page, you have to tap on Clear History and then tap on More Options. Then, tap Disconnect future business (Figure A).

Figure A

Finding the section to prevent Facebook tracking is not easy.

In the resulting window (Figure B), tap the On / Off slider for Future Off-Facebook Activity. You will then need to verify the setting by tapping Disable.

Figure B

Deactivation of the activity outside of Facebook.

There is a caveat to disable this feature. When you turn it off you will not be able to log into apps and websites using Facebook. It’s okay if you don’t use your Facebook account to log into certain services. But if you do, you will break this ability.

Facebook doesn’t want you to break this connection. The company wants its algorithm to serve you ads because that’s how they profit. But that dark, dirty little no-secret secret is pretty active in the company. Fewer and fewer people are willing to trust Facebook and especially the advertisements they promote. Personally, I was burned twice by the ads on the platform. Once I never received the product I ordered and the company refused to return my communications and another time the product that was sent to me was absolutely not similar to the advertised product. After those two incidents, I refuse to click or be tempted by an ad I see on Facebook. From the many people I’ve talked to about this, that feeling is growing rapidly. People aren’t clicking on Facebook ads like they used to and situations, like the one I went through over the weekend, are fueling that fire of distrust.

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