> who is left on facebook aside from dopamine junkies and bots.
Political activists, like a former partner of mine.
… who I mute, because I am a British person living in Berlin, I don't need or want "Demexit Memes" and similar groups, which is 90% of what they post …
… which in turn means that sometimes when I visit Facebook, my feed is actually empty, because nobody else is posting anything …
… which is still an improvement on when the algorithm decides to fill it up with junk, as the algorithm shows me people I don't know doing things I don't care abut interspersed with adverts for stuff I can't use (for all they talk about the "value" of the ads, I get ads both for dick pills and boob surgery, and tax advisors for a country I don't live in who specialise in helping people renounce I nationality I never had in the first place, and sometimes ads I not only can't read but can't even pronounce because they're in cyrillic).
> I get ads both for dick pills and boob surgery
There is some percentage of the world-wide population that would find interest in both ads simultaneously.
While true (you're not the first to suggest it, even), in the context of the other things they show, I think it is more likely to be an example of them not knowing which advertiser to pitch my eyeballs at, and less likely to be them identifying me as a member of this set.
I take poorly directed targeting advertisements as a performance indicator for how well my data privacy efforts are working. When the ad targeting has you dead to rights is when you need to worry.
To an extent, sure, but I think also a sign their analytics were never as good as they claimed.
For example, so far as I know my name is strongly gendered male, so why the boob surgery ads?
> my name is strongly gendered male, so why the boob surgery ads?
Probably so you can suggest it to your partner.
This. My wife and I can hardly buy each other surprise gifts because the targeted advertising gives us away every time.