Facebook ads to back off users

The Future. Before governments around the world can stop Facebook from tracking users all over the internet, the company is reinventing its ad business on its own terms to fit a world that now demands privacy. While advertisers and small businesses will certainly suffer, the changes could be a first step to cleaning up Facebook’s image.

Lose the trail
Graham Mudd, Facebook’s VP of product marketing, said in an interview with The Verge that they are trying to get ahead of on-coming legislation and design an ad system that “benefits all of our customers.”

• This includes ideas like “differential privacy,” a way of anonymizing individual data so advertisers won’t learn anything about you specifically.
• Additionally, it’s testing “on-device learning,” which is when the algorithm serves users ad recommendations solely from the information gathered on their devices instead of sending the data to the cloud where the company stores it.
  • Data then gets sent to advertisers in the form of anonymous insights.

The power of privacy
Of course, Facebook’s ad business (and Google’s and Amazon’s) was built on the idea that it could provide advertisers with the most detailed data on users. And with the platform counting 2.85 billion users, that’s a lot of value. But those good ole’ tracking days are coming to an end because…

• Apple changed their iOS to let users deny permission for platforms to track them across apps.
• Google is about to do the same for Android devices.
• The EU wants to outlaw “micro-targeted” ads.
• Seemingly every government agency in the U.S. is already suing and or is planning to sue the company.

Call it the age of data consent.