Tech companies owe their existence to collecting user data, but seem to be somewhat shy when users are told exactly how much data they really have.
Messaging app Signal, which has been crusader for privacy rights, says it tried to run a somewhat unusual advertising campaign on Instagram. Instagram usually lets businesses run ads based on user interests — you can, for instance, run ads targeted towards people who’re interested in cricket, or those who’re from a particular location. But Signal instead tried running ads which told users what exactly Instagram — and parent company Facebook — knew about them.
“We created a multi-variant targeted ad designed to show you the personal data that Facebook collects about you and sells access to. The ad would simply display some of the information collected about the viewer which the advertising platform uses,” Signal wrote in its blog.
And the ads that were generated weren’t the kind of ads you normally see. “You got this ad because you’re a newlywed pilates instructor and you’re cartoon crazy. This ad used your location to see you’re in La Jolla. You’re into parenting blogs and thinking about LGBTQ adoption,” one such ad said, using information that Facebook knows about its users.
Other ads were in much the same vein, explicitly telling users what Facebook knew about them. “We created a multi-variant targeted ad designed to show you the personal data that Facebook collects about you and sells access to. The ad would simply display some of the information collected about the viewer which the advertising platform uses,” Signal wrote in its blog.
Facebook, though, was less than impressed with the creative ad campaign, and disabled Signal’s ad account.
But Signal decided to broadcast its experience to the world. “Facebook is more than willing to sell visibility into people’s lives, unless it’s to tell people about how their data is being used. Being transparent about how ads use people’s data is apparently enough to get banned; in Facebook’s world, the only acceptable usage is to hide what you’re doing from your audience,” it wrote.