I don't mind targeted advertising, personally. I'd rather see ads that are meaningful to me than ones that aren't.
But, then, I don't have anything in particular to hide. Unlike, say, a gay teenager, living at home with his homophobic parents. Who, say, might have discovered that, even though he was not identifying himself as gay on Facebook, found that, no matter what he did, that Facebook kept serving up very explicitly gay advertisements, since, based on their internal algorithms, his friends, his visiting other FB-enabled web sites, etc., they decided he must indeed be gay, for purposes of selling ads.
Which, when spotted by his parents, led to him being kicked out out of the house.
Nice commercially-profitable move, Facebook.
Now, top asshattery award here goes to the parents. But one might think that FB would think very carefully about labeling a person gay for advertising purposes who has not identified themselves as such on their FB profile. Because, sadly, there are asshats out there who will react badly to such a "discovery." #ddtb
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This is truly a shame. I don't hang out on FB much anymore, they are just getting scary with trying to sell your information. However, for future reference since I added Adblock to Firefox I don't get ads on FB when I am there. I am sure it will be a matter of time before you won't be able to access it without the ads…but for someone who might be wondering, you can try it if you want to keep your privacy from something like this happening.
Facebook’s cavalier attitude towards one’s personal data, data mining, contact info selling/renting/I don’t care what it’s called or how temporary, is what has kept me from joining.
The entry linked above has been removed at the request of his partner. Fine by me. His parents? I just don’t understand that kind of behavior. I wonder if the kid got a chance to defend himself, or whether that would have mattered in the least. Family values, riiiight.
@Marina – I can’t imagine what, short of her being an actual physical or material threat, would lead me to kick my child out of the house for something like that. No matter how offensive to me an act she committed was, she would still be my daughter.