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I don't think people understand just how much "data-driven advertising" is a fucking scam. For example, Facebook has known my date of birth for about 15 years, and pretty much every ad it serves is for activities explicitly for under 30s. I'm 38. It knows this.
Facebook knows I live in London, and has known this fact for more than a decade. It just loves to serve me ads for businesses in Birmingham, where it knows I don't live.
Google and the brand I bought it from know that I own a specific type of mattress. They know this because I googled it and came into the website and bought it. And yet, I get advertised that specific mattress, from that specific supplier.
This is going to be one of those threads that I wish Mastodon had a "turn off replies" features, so anyway before replying, please thoroughly read this and also know that I work in marketing so I have a decent grasp on how advertising works, which is how I can confidently say the entire thing is a fucking scam run by the stupidest people in the world. https://anotherangrywoman.com/2023/01/18/how-to-give-advice-on-the-internet-without-being-an-utter-menace/
I ended up blogging about this in much more detail because I think it's important we talk about this https://anotherangrywoman.com/2023/07/05/scams-upon-scams-the-data-driven-advertising-grift/
(not a rickroll, I promise)
A couple of people have been asking about how the whole ~stealing elections~ thing works in the context of this scam and I'm probably going to have to write a follow up working through that, but where I'm at is pretty much that Cambridge Analytica, etc, are very much in the category of their product is making people think they *could* and that the "microtargeting" was wildly, wildly overstated.
IMO Cambridge Analytica and their ilk are part of the scam.
What makes the stealing elections thing work is not the sophistication of their technology, but the crudeness of the product they "sell". They never stole elections for any complex or sophisticated policies. Only for fascist demagouges.
Social Media can't create the desire for a special brand of mattres in people, but it can make them afraid and angry. That has always been enough to sell some people fascism.