A Closer Look At Facebook’s Data Acquisition To Understand Users’ Offline Behavior

Facebook’s advertising prowess is nothing to scoff at. The social media colossus raked in a whopping $7 billion in the third quarter alone, with up to 84 percent of this profit generated by ad sales. As a result, Facebook sits comfortably as second-in-command in the digital advertising market, right behind Google – a company that was established years before Facebook even entered the scene.

Google boasts control over about 31 percent of the digital advertising market, whereas Facebook commands a considerable 12 percent share. This might seem minor in comparison, but the reality is far from it. Despite Facebook entering the market years after Google, the social media giant has managed to secure a significant portion of the market share.

Drawing the curtain back on Facebook’s advertising strategy, it may not surprise you that Facebook spends a considerable amount of money acquiring data on users’ offline habits. Facebook, with its user base of over 1.7 billion people, curates a substantial database of information that even governments are keen to tap into. However, to bolster their knowledge on our offline behaviors, Facebook turns to other companies, paying top dollar to gain access to that coveted data.

A recent report published by ProPublica unravels the details of these transactions. It revealed that Facebook’s partnering companies provide a diverse array of information, from users’ spending habits to their income brackets.

ProPublica conducted an experiment to unearth the categories Facebook uses for its ad scheme. It discovered that Facebook not only uses algorithms to dictate the news and advertisements users see but also to segregate its users into micro-targetable groups. The categories identified ranged from innocent groupings, such as those who enjoy southern food, to potentially sensitive categorizations, like “Ethnic Affinity,” which classifies people based on their preference for certain ethnicities.

However, ProPublica reports that the majority of the information Facebook furnishes for its advertisers is unearthed from its own substantial database. From the 29,000 categories made available to its advertisers, merely around 600 are sourced from third-party providers like Experian, Oracle Data Cloud, and WPP. The actual influence of these 600 categories could well be worth Facebook’s investment in them.

While it isn’t uncommon for users to request these third-party companies not to share their data with Facebook, this often becomes a logistical nightmare. And it’s not just Facebook; it’s a common practice for other big tech names, including Google, to harvest vast amounts of data about their users. At this point in time, the only foolproof safeguard to prevent your data from being shared is to remain offline. However, it’s crucial to note that it is still uncertain whether Facebook is in violation of any privacy laws.

In the wake of this revelation, Steve Satterfield, Facebook’s Manager of Privacy and Public Policy, released a statement responding to the ProPublica report. He notes, “Our approach to controls for third-party categories is somewhat different from our approach for Facebook-specific categories… this is because the data providers we work with generally make their categories available across many different ad platforms, not just on Facebook.”

The key takeaway from this exploration of data use by Facebook and other major tech companies is this: while we can control some aspects of our data’s dispersion, complete assurance of privacy may necessitate an offline existence in our modern digital age.