While you’re absent mindedly scrolling through your Facebook feed, you’ve probably noticed a few weird adverts.
Like this:
Or this:
Four weeks? That seems too good to be true but, hey, if it’s on Facebook, who am I to doubt its legitimacy?
These ‘suggested posts’ are all part of targeted advertising. Apparently (and not at all surprisingly) Facebook has been watching us all very closely and holding on to certain, very specific, information about each one of us.
Basically, the social media site has a complete list of things you’re interested in – based on Google searches, Facebook pages you follow and the like – and it means advertisers can target ads towards those people with specific interests.
Fortunately, you can actually see this list and edit it yourself.
Just go into ‘Settings’ in the top right-hand corner, click on ‘Adverts’ and then click ‘Edit’ on the section titled ‘Ads based on my preferences’. Or, alternatively, click here to get straight to the fun.
And get ready to see some very weird shit.
Underneath the various basic categories under your preferences, you’ll find that you’ll probably have hundreds of specific preferences listed, some of which are very odd indeed.
For instance, after checking my own ‘advert preferences’ I discovered six separate items listed underneath ‘Fitness and Wellness’, despite a pretty hardcore gym allergy.
Also found, included bizarrely specific items such as ‘Awe’, ‘Nonsense’, ‘Time’, ‘Rodeo’, ‘Miracle’ and ‘Motherhood’. I can’t wait to see some ads based on those.
Don’t worry though, you can get rid of these items by hovering and clicking the X for each of the weird things Facebook has decided you like, so you won’t be labelled as a fan of ‘stalking’ or ‘broccoli’ for much longer.
