Mark Zuckerberg Knows I Have A Poodle
Billions of people are having incredibly accurate profiles built about them, solely based on the content they interact with on Facebook. These profiles have been used for things like political meddling, and will continue to be used to create future harm. Facebook’s current data collection methods should be updated because they are extremely invasive, manipulative, and unsafe.
My research for this blog post started with me requesting my own data from Facebook. Unsurprisingly, this process was easier said than done. I originally attempted to find this information by myself, but I quickly realized that anything interesting was probably hidden behind multiple different settings buttons. I searched the internet for tutorials on how to download your data, reading multiple outdated articles along the way, until I found a Facebook blog post that neatly listed out each step. My problems continued even after figuring out how to make the request. I decided to request all of my data, and I ended up waiting in limbo for over an hour before my files were ready to download. In the end, I downloaded 5.5 gigabytes of data that detailed my life from June 5th, 2012 to present day.
As soon as my information was downloaded, I started combing through the files, trying to pick out things I found interesting. The search started off pretty mild. I looked through my ad interests(a list of topics that helps Facebook show you relevant advertisements) and saw that Poodles were listed, which makes sense because my family has a standard Poodle. I also saw League of Legends, the Witcher, and my local TV stations listed, all of which I’ve either watched or played. After studying the list, I realized that Facebook had a pretty comprehensive understanding of what I like and don’t like.
The next thing I looked at was a file called “friend_peer_group”. I opened it, and it basically had a single line that said “Starting Adult Life”. I thought this was equal parts fascinating and disturbing because Facebook was somehow able to discern that I would be graduating college soon and transitioning into post graduate life. How did Facebook know this? Did I inadvertently submit my graduation date somewhere along the way? Were they using my high school graduation date to make this inference? Did they know because I’m a part of the University of Michigan campus group? There was no way for me to figure out how they came to this conclusion, so I could only make educated guesses.
The last and most invasive file I looked at was the one that detailed my location history from 2014 to present day. This was by far the most concerning thing that I saw. My location history could easily tell the story of what I’ve been up to since 2014. I started at the very beginning, and the first coordinate I saw ended up being the address of my childhood home. It was jarring seeing that Facebook was keeping track of where I was 8 years ago to the minute. I continued scrolling and saw my high school and the golf course I practiced at during high school pop up multiple times. I kept going and soon saw the gym that I worked at the summer after my senior year, the dorm I lived in my freshman year of college, my basement apartment from my sophomore year, the house in Ann Arbor I currently live in, and the house my parents recently moved to, all perfectly dated and timestamped. Part of me always knew that my location was being tracked but it was fascinating to see the scale of the operation.
The first thing I felt after completing my deep dive was a sort of confusion. I genuinely thought I was doing a decent job limiting the access to my data that Facebook had, but that clearly wasn’t the case. Those feelings transitioned into annoyance. Going through all of this information made me realize that Facebook had created a comprehensive profile of me without even realizing it. Mark Zuckerberg probably knows me better than my parent’s in some ways because Facebook maintains a list of things that I’m interested in.
So, why is this level of invasion bad outside of the fact that it makes me uncomfortable? It’s bad because of who we are tracking. My personal data dates back to 2012 when I was just 12 years old. How was I able to consent to be tracked at such a young age? Lying about my age when signing up for my account shouldn’t serve as justification for tracking minors.
Underage tracking is an even bigger problem now with Meta’s push to expand their user base to children. In 2017, Messenger Kids was released. Messenger Kids serves to replicate the normal Facebook Messenger experience for children aged 6–12, except it has extra safety measures in place. Because of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, only a limited amount of data can be directly collected. It would be incredibly naive to think that Meta is offering this service out of charity and has no plans to utilize loopholes to monetize their young user bases’ information. In a Verge article, written at the time of the release of the app, it was noted that Facebook “did not say how it would monetize the app, other than to say it would not include ads. It did not describe whether parents would have access to any of the data being gathered about their families, or how that data might be used”. Basically, Facebook would not directly address how they plan to capitalize off the app. Common sense, a media resource for parents, has also warned parents about Messenger Kids in their review of the app. The review mentions how parental relationships, time spent active, and messages would be tracked. All of this combined is concerning because companies like Facebook are establishing profiles of people at younger and younger ages, and there are an increasing number of questions about how this data is being used now and how it will be used in the future when these minors are adults.
This level of tracking continues to be problematic when looking at how some of this tracking is actually occurring. Meta tracks user activity not just on the Facebook site, but off of it as well. Have you ever noticed a “like” or “share” button on a web page? If you’re signed into your Facebook account, browsing the web, and then come across one of those buttons, Facebook will know that you have visited the site. You don’t even have to interact with the buttons in order for that information to be recorded. They just have to load on your screen.
So once again, why is it bad to track unsuspecting adults or children outside of the fact that it is weird? It is bad because of how this tracked information is being used against consumers. In a 2016 report, ProPublica determined that Facebook has at least 52,000 attributes used to categorize people. Some of those categories include breastfeeding in public and texting in awkward situations. Basically, Facebook has the ability to micro-target ads to you based on all of the information they’ve kept about you.
Micro-targeted ads aren’t just terrible because they can be annoying, but because they can cause harm in the real world. In a New York Times interview, Shoshana Zuboff, author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism”, said “operationally, what happens is they get to a point where they know so much about us that they can fashion targeting mechanisms. We’re not just talking about targeted ads. We’re talking about subliminal cues, psychological micro targeting, real time rewards and punishments, algorithmic recommendation tools and engineered social comparison dynamics”. This has already happened in real life. A 2017 report revealed that fake Russian accounts spent over 100,000 dollars in advertisements in order to influence the 2016 presidential election. The ads focused on controversial topics like gay rights, gun control, and immigration. Essentially, outside forces were able to impact the 2016 presidential election by targeting groups prone to misinformation, all through the Facebook platform.
These ad profiles also have the potential to increase racial tensions. In 2017, it was revealed that advertisers could focus their reach to target “Jew haters” and other similar groups. ProPublica tested this out by buying $30 worth of ads to reach people who expressed interest in topics like “How to burn jews” and “History of ‘why jews ruined the world’”. The ads pushed ProPublica articles to user’s timelines and were approved in 15 minutes. In theory, a bad actor could have advertised Nazi paraphernalia to Nazi Facebook users, or they could have pushed out divisive content about Jewish people to their timeline to increase their hatred towards Jewish people. These categories anti-semetic were algorithmically created, and after the report came out, Facebook corrected their mistake. The automated nature of this leads me to believe that problems like this will continue to pop up because there are an infinite number of inappropriate categories that advertisers could abuse. Additionally, because of how quick those initial advertisements were approved, it’s hard to believe that any amount of manual verification would be sufficient.
Now the question is, what can be done to prevent the misuse of your data? One key solution that seems to already be working is having hardware manufacturers create software defenses for consumers. This is exactly what Apple did for their devices. In 2021, they released a feature that limited how digital advertisers could track users by forcing them to explicitly ask for their consent to be tracked across other websites and apps. This update has clearly been working in favor of consumers, and that’s evident through the fact that Meta’s valuation went down by 250 billion dollars after their earnings report in early 2022, which many people have attributed to Apple’s policy change.
Facebook also needs to also take responsibility for their practices. I’m a computer science student, so given my background, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of my digital footprint. The opposite happened to be the case. I never really understood the level of tracking that was occurring until I did research and a deep dive into my own data. Even though it would hurt their bottom line, Facebook should explicitly ask for consent when tracking users. Right now, they are taking an opt out approach when in reality it should be opt in with users actually understanding what they are signing up for before opting in.
Similarly, Facebook needs to do a better job of making user data available. It was not a straightforward process to request and search through my data. It also took me a while to realize that not all of my data was included when I initially downloaded data. The process should also be quicker. I waited for about an hour before it was available to download, but there was no indication of how long it would take in the first place. I could have easily forgotten and never downloaded it.
In conclusion, Facebook’s tracking policy is pretty detrimental to consumers and the general public. The platform has taken advantage of users without their knowledge in order to push out content that is harmful for the world. Facebook and other companies that host the platform need to put profit to the side temporarily for the greater good of society.
