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Is there any evidence to suggest those rumors are actually the result of unusually high levels of sophistication on the part of Facebook's ad targeting systems, and not just an artifact of confirmation bias and the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon?


Not really, the truth is likely much more mundane: People are fairly predictable [1] and their predilections aren't that unique [2].

1: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targ...

2: Real conversation I overheard: "I was talking to my friend about buying a switch and the very next day I got FB ads for it!" - well duh, it's the holiday season and game consoles are very popular gifts.


Why would it need to be unusually sophisticated?

Speech to text and keyword search are both fairly mundane.




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