Facebook ‘Transparency’ Function Blocks Users Who Get Too Curious

A Facebook tool designed to inform users about the advertisers trying to target them through the platform withholds key information from consumers that get too curious, even locking them out when they use it too many times, according to a report in Bloomberg Businessweek.

From Bloomberg Businessweek:

Rather than providing unfiltered transparency, this Facebook function is instead feeding users frequently misleading—and sometimes untrue—reasons for why they’ve been targeted, Bloomberg Businessweek tests of the function suggest. The findings are corroborated by a new academic study of thousands of test ads that found Facebook’s explanations, “often omitting key details that would allow users to understand and potentially control the way they are targeted.”

The report’s anecdotal test of Facebook’s function is backed up by a similar, larger-scale study by researchers.

“Across all our experiments, we consistently found that Facebook’s explanations are incomplete and sometimes misleading,” they wrote (italics included) of their research, which was funded in part by the U.S. government’s National Science Foundation.

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