Find Out What Facebook Thinks You’re Interested In

Find Out What Facebook Thinks You’re Interested In

If you use Facebook regularly, the site probably has a ton of information about you. It uses this information to determine which ads to show you. Now you can see what Facebook thinks about you.

To get started, head to facebook.com/ads/preferences. Here, you’ll find a large collection of “interests” Facebook thinks you have, sorted into categories. Even if you haven’t explicitly Liked the Facebook page of certain interests or characteristics (like “Windows 10 user” or “Family-based households”), Facebook will often guess and place that guess there.

The entire ad preferences page is a fascinating look into how Facebook analyses and categorises its users. If you don’t want a particular topic influencing the ads you see, you can remove it here. Obviously, you can’t turn it off entirely, but you can tweak it.

It’s unclear if this information affects what you see in the news feed. Presumably even if Facebook keeps a different database for ad preferences and story interests, they would line up similarly. Knowing that your feeds are only showing you part of the story is important for dealing with your own biases.

Facebook Ad Preferences [via The New York Times]


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