After it emerged that Facebook user data was illicitly harvested to help elect Donald Trump, the company offered weeks of apologies, minor reforms to how it shares such information, and a pledge to make itself “more transparent,” including new, limited disclosures around advertising. But Facebook still tells its 2 billion users very little about how it targets them for ads that represent essentially the whole of the company's business. New research illuminates the likely reason why: The truth grosses people out.
The study, based on research conducted at Harvard Business School and published in the Journal of Consumer Research, is an inquiry into the tradeoffs between transparency and persuasion in the age of the algorithm. Specifically, it examines what happens if a company reveals to people how and why they've been targeted for a given ad, exposing the algorithmic trail that, say, inferred that you're interested in discounted socks based on a constellation of behavioral signals gleaned from across the web.
Read Full Article »