But Facebook, the world’s largest social media network, has come up with its own determination of your political leanings, based on your activity on the site.
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Want to know whether Facebook is correct in assuming that you are either a conservative, liberal, or moderate? All they would need to do is visit facebook.com/ads/preferences, click the “Lifestyle and Culture” tab, which is under the header titled “Interests”, and find a box that is labeled “US Politics”. As a result, Facebook now knows the political views of its users and is using that information to sell ads to corporations.
On the other hand, users can easily delete any data that the Ad Preference page has on them, as Mashable reports. If most people who like Ben & Jerry’s are liberal, and you like Ben & Jerry’s, Facebook might guess you are a liberal as well.
What’s even more surprising is a Facebook user doesn’t even have to “like” a campaign page, a candidate’s profile, or post all that much about his or her political views for Facebook to deduce where the user’s loyalty lies – according to Facebook advertisers.
Finding out the political opinions of your family, friends, and acquaintances has to be one of the worst things about Facebook-unless you’re Facebook.
Facebook has always been collecting information on its users, but it recently revamped the ad preferences page, making it easier to view. The labels Facebook assigns to its users help campaigns more precisely target a particular audience.
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Campaigns can also use the groupings to show different messages to different supporters. Facebook has that kind of information on 1.7 billion people around the globe, including 204 million in the United States. Even users who are more discreet about their political ideology can inadvertently expose themselves to Facebook’s data mining operation. Numerous others are directly commercial: whether you like television comedy shows, video games or NASCAR.
