Anybody who has been on Facebook long enough may have had the feeling that maybe the social network knows more than it should.
Facebook advertising is highly targeted because the company has enough data to be able to help advertisers reach the person they think will buy their product.
This practice of data collection is something that is starting to change but when it comes to Facebook it does feel like a case of closing the doors after the horse bolted.
That doesn’t mean the problem can’t be highlighted though which is what Signal wanted to do with an advertising campaign.
“We created a multi-variant targeted ad designed to show you the personal data that Facebook collects about you and sells access to. The ad would simply display some of the information collected about the viewer which the advertising platform uses,” writes Signal.
Facebook, as you might’ve guessed, was not a fan of these adverts and as such Signal’s advertising account was banned.
“Being transparent about how ads use people’s data is apparently enough to get banned; in Facebook’s world, the only acceptable usage is to hide what you’re doing from your audience,” quips Signal.
While we appreciate the schadenfreude, Signal raises an important point with these adverts. That point being that Facebook knows more about us than many of us would be comfortable with and it’s using that data across its platforms.
