Virtually everyone uses Facebook. We all have our reasons, but let’s say you find yourself scrolling through posts when suddenly you encounter an ad for fidget toys. You know you don’t use them, but here it is, recommended in your feed. This is just another example of how Facebook and its parent company Meta collect data on you.
According to the Facebook Help Center, the website uses multiple factors when determining what ads to show, and you can find these by clicking on the “Options” button (the three dots) on the top right of the ad and selecting “Why am I seeing this ad?”. The menu will list different factors, such as who the company wants to target and your recent Facebook activity. For instance, under “Your activity,” it’ll list ads and pages you interacted with. That FunisFun LED Keyboard Clicker you bought on Amazon for a friend? You found out about it through Facebook, so now Meta thinks you’re interested in buying more fidget toys. Any activity on Facebook, or through a company that advertises on Facebook, will result in similar ads popping up for you.
Unfortunately, this news is par for the course for Facebook users. Just using Facebook messenger collects a ton of data compared to other communication apps. It provides a personalized experience, and you might actually find something worth purchasing through those ads — visit enough video game groups on Facebook, and you might receive an ad for the perfect controller for your Steam Deck. But on the other hand, many people might view these ads as an invasion of privacy.
How to change the ads you see on Facebook
You can tweak the data Facebook uses to customize your ads on a general or specific basis. For instance, say you see an ad for a MacBook Neo. The laptop provides great value, but you’re not a Mac person. Just click the Options button on the top right corner of the ad and press either “Hide ad” or “Not interested,” or select “Why am I seeing this ad?” and then click on “Hide” next to “Hide all ads from this advertiser.” The first option will prevent this specific ad from appearing again; the second option makes it less likely to see similar ads, and the last one blocks the advertiser from your Facebook feed going forward.
If you want to tweak your ad settings without painting all of them with a general “no entry” brush, you’ll have to update your ad preferences. Click the Options button, select “Why you saw this ad,” and then click “Update your ad preferences.” The page is divided into “Customize ads” and “Manage info” tabs.
For instance, in “Customize ads,” you can select one of the listed ad topics or “See all” to check them all out, then pick the subjects you don’t want advertised and change the preference to “See less.” Meanwhile, you can withhold personal data (such as your job and education) by navigating to “Manage info,” selecting “Categories used to reach you,” then selecting your personal information and clicking on “No” under “Use this information to personalize ads?”.
You can never truly stop the Facebook ad flow
Since ads help keep the lights on at Meta — and by extension Facebook — the company is incentivized to show as many as possible. More importantly, Meta is incentivized to use systems that learn about you to make those ads more relevant.
Per Facebook’s Help Center, the site uses machine learning models to provide information about your habits both on and off the feed. It doesn’t matter if you join a discussion on an indie toyline or go shopping for Hatsune Miku-branded Nvidia graphics cards; the algorithm is always working behind the scenes in conjunction with third-party companies to personalize ads for individual users. Even if you update preferences and tell Facebook you don’t want to see more links to purchase Hatsune Miku plushes, the machine learning model will keep trying. Every action you take online is just another avenue for the program.
At the end of the day, you can stem the flow of ads on Facebook and weed out the most annoying and inappropriate, but there will always be ads. Not even adblockers such as Ublock Origin Lite can stop them. No ads means no Facebook, and no Facebook means advertisers can’t reach as many potential customers as possible. It’s a sinister symbiosis that you just have to deal with.
