Facebook delivers content to your News Feed based on your engagement and interactions on the site.
In order to deliver “relevant” content to your feed, Facebook has to create a basic profile of who you are, your interests, dislikes, and who you are engaging with.
Most commercial websites and social networks do this, particularly, to serve you advertisements. While the service itself may be free, your data and ultimately your views and clicks do come at a cost.
Some are unbothered by this while others, well, are a little troubled or don’t know this is happening.
According to Pew Research, 74% of Facebook users had no idea the social network did this. Of those that did, Pew found that about half said they were not comfortable with how the social network categorized them. More than a quarter stated that the site’s classifications did not accurately represent who they are.
See how Facebook is classifying you by visiting Facebook’s Ad Preferences section. You must be logged in in order to see your ad preferences.
Users can decide how they want the social network to use their activity to deliver advertisements on the platform.
Pew says it decided to conduct this study due the number of Americans using the site, how it delivers advertisements to its users, and how people use the site for social and civic purposes.
Joe Gullo