Facebook is known for always having ads and posts that are directed at you. For instance, say you’re in the library studying for a big exam, and you think to yourself that you need a coffee to keep you awake. You check Facebook for a little study break, and you’ll have an ad for Starbucks, and you wonder how it knew you were thinking about coffee. It’s because Facebook uses your location to direct ads to you. It uses your real-world conversations and locations to produce ads that show up in the News Feed. If you think this is an invasion of privacy, you are not alone. Over 51% of people in a Pew Research center study agree that they were uncomfortable with being followed and characterized by Facebook. One way to limit the real-time ads from Facebook is to turn off your location services in your Settings and Privacy. Now this won’t cut out all the real-time ads from Facebook, but it definitely will limit some. Facebook also uses what you like and follow to customize ads for you, so you’ll still get some ads based off that.
I think Facebook and other apps that use location services to customize things for you are invading your privacy. I don’t want to scroll through Facebook and see ads for Penn State apparel because they can tell by my location that I am on Penn State’s campus. It’s something I have plenty of and I do not need to be convinced to buy more of. Facebook should really allow some privacy of their customers, as they are already put so much of their life on the social media platform, through pictures and status updates. They do not need my location to gather more information on me.
Source: USA Today News
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2020/03/04/facebook-not-recording-our-calls-but-has-other-ways-snoop/4795519002/
This isn’t a problem with just Facebook either, Instagram, reddit, pop-up ads and more have a tendency to show products and concepts that coincidentally were just talked about moments before. Ive talked about tv shows that were decades old, products that were discontinued and somehow when scrolling through my feed, there would be something related to that show or product. To this day it still freaks me out and my roommates and I joke about it being a NSA agent that watches out every move constantly, including typing this comment. Like OP said, a way to stop this is by turning off location services, alongside maybe Siri and other recording methods. However, even though doing this can protect you from other intruders, it probably won’t stop the algorithm that is embedded in most applications. As I went to find an article for this reply I came across this website called CPO magazine; before I even went to look at the details a pop up came on the screen telling me that the website is using cookies and IP addresses in order for personalization and ad selection. Maybe that wasn’t such a coincidence of itself
Lindsey, N. (2019, May 28). New Research Study Shows That Social Media Privacy Might Not Be Possible. Retrieved March 8, 2020, from https://www.cpomagazine.com/data-privacy/new-research-study-shows-that-social-media-privacy-might-not-be-possible/
In all honesty, are we surprised that facebook collects our information? I do think that is an invasion of privacy to listen to peoples conversations and track their location to feed them ads through that information, but we give social media platforms so much power it is understandable why they do it. Facebook has admitted to using peoples locations and private information, however they claimed it was not an invasion of privacy because there currently was no privacy. Users were unaware, but while using Facebook there was no privacy. Everything users did on Facebook the company collected that information to use as data to push ads on your device. The article linked below talks about how Mark Zuckerberg admitted to the open use of data from users.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kalevleetaru/2019/06/01/in-facebooks-own-words-this-week-there-is-no-privacy-on-its-platform/#5454b325b32f
Facebook has been blamed with being too invasive with people’s information and causing them to feel uncomfortable. You say Facebook and other apps that use location services invade our privacy but the truth is more than half of the apps on our phone have the location services feature. You are essentially saying that half the apps on your phone are invading your privacy when in reality they are not. If they are actually invading your privacy, you can easily fix it by turning off location services and not letting know Facebook what types of things you like. If the app is truly invading your privacy the best thing to do would be to delete the app and stop using it completely.
source: https://www.cnet.com/news/facebook-reportedly-thinks-theres-no-expectation-of-privacy-on-social-media/#:~:text=The%20social%20network%20wants%20to,from%20the%20Cambridge%20Analytica%20scandal.&text=%22There%20is%20no%20invasion%20of,scandal%2C%20according%20to%20Law%20360.