The function in the Off Facebook Activity settings will display all applications and websites that send information about you to Facebook, it is used as advertising. But is it okay to be tracked?
How are we being followed?
You can clear your history and prevent your movement from being tracked, but one expert said the move is unlikely to have a big impact on the firm's bottom line.
While the tracking program is developing very slowly, only Ireland, South Korea and Spain have access to it, but the goal is to eventually offer it to the world.
The initiative came at a time when Apple and Mozilla had already taken steps to stop Facebook and other services from tracking users across their browsers from one online platform to another.
In addition, the firm that monitors competition in Germany said that it needs to significantly limit the collection and aggregation of data about its users, if it has not received their consent in advance.
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Common interests
Facebook collects data outside of its platform, either because you choose to use a social networking site to log into the app, or, more likely, because the website uses the Facebook Pixel to track your actions.
That's why, when you browse the website with new shoes, you find an ad popping up in your Facebook news feed half an hour later, telling you about that nifty pair of shoes you just looked at. These are the tracking results.
What is Offline Facebook Activity for?
The “Offline Facebook activity” parameter will allow you to determine exactly what data about you, various applications or sites Facebook shares.
You can then disconnect them from your social network profile. If you take advantage of this, it should mean that these shoe advertisements stop following you all over the internet pretty persistently.
It's important to emphasize that Facebook will still collect data, but it will be anonymous - they may know that a lot of people are looking at these shoes, but they won't know that they are of your interest.
The Off-Facebook Activity has been in development for over a year and fulfills the promise made by Mark Zuckerberg at last year's developer conference to give users more control over how their data is used.
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The new tool will allow users to see which third-party sites and applications are transmitting data about them to Facebook.
But how will users react to this feature, and what will it mean for the company's advertising business? I suspect that those people who use it will be terrified. It's one thing to know that you are being tracked in principle, quite another to see it in black and white.
“This is how the Internet works,” Facebook says rather cautiously on its blog about the new tool.
And in a briefing, Stephanie Max, a company manager, made the unlikely claim that the reason he was collecting data was to help users "discover businesses that interest them."
How do these settings affect profits?
If millions of users study this new setting and then decide to turn off data, then in theory it could be detrimental to both advertisers and Facebook's profits. What impact this will have, we asked Stephanie Max. What happens if, say, 20% of users have closed the link between this data stream and their Facebook profiles?
“We haven't done this simulation,” she replied, adding that there is a lot of evidence that users value a personalized experience, and this was closely related to the way Facebook operates today.
It might seem odd that the company was unable to predict in advance what impact this new transparency might have on their earnings, but it might be right if it monitors this activity rather weakly.
First, it looks like finding and then using the Off-Facebook tool won't be very cheap. On the other hand, a Facebook ad business expert said things were changing. And in this way, it makes accurate user targeting less important.
Mat Morrison, chief marketing officer at marketing agency Digital Whiskey, says advertisers are slowly realizing that targeting 23-year-old men in High Wycombe who enjoy mountain biking and eating sushi isn't all that beneficial.
“Agencies are trying to convince customers to calm down about nano targeting,” he explained. “When we started using Facebook data, we could easily create a nano targeting audience of just 20 people. Of course, it turns out to be a waste of everyone's time and money."
The history of several years confirms that the extremely expensive advertising break on ITV's Coronation Street, which produced a wide, albeit ill-defined audience, has been replaced by the precise targeting offered by social media ads.
“Now,” says Morrison, “the pendulum is swinging again, and Facebook ads are valued for reaching a wide range of people. Building broad audience consensus is what advertising has always done.”
So even if part of the Facebook population revolts against constantly monitoring their wider online activity, still remember that the social networking site will still contain a lot of data about them and it is unlikely that advertisers will leave what became the main destination for their posts. …
It is worth noting that the two countries where the new development will debut are in the European Union. The tech giant can show EU regulators that it gives users more control over their data without hurting its ad revenue. Work is done.
