"For example, if a Facebook user who was gay and struggling to come out of the closet was viewing the Facebook page of a gay support group, and then clicked on an ad, the advertiser would know the exact identity of that person, and that s/he was viewing the Facebook page of a gay support group just before navigating to their site." The company is already being sued for potentially outing its users based on the advertising they were served:ĭavid Gould and Mike Robertson allege that from February until May, Facebook leaked a host of data about users who clicked on ads via the referrer headers, which allegedly transmitted enough data to marketers that they could identify the people who landed on advertisers' sites after clicking ads on Facebook. On another, however, it could be dangerous. It's the Web 2.0 version of the Seinfeld episode which coined the phrase, "not that there's anything wrong with that" (video below). On one level, the idea that Facebook is wrongly convinced that many of its users are gay is hilarious. I am not gay and I don't want to be continually asked if I want to take a peek at a guy, do you? Talk about a deterrent to be on Facebook at work!"įacebook even has a couple of protest pages (that virtually no one has joined) of users complaining about the way Facebook thinks they're gay, even when they insist that they're not: Yet I get this ad, 'Gayborhood' and so many other ads littering my sidebar all the time. Mine says straight, right after it says I'm a male. All of my sidebar ads are for these kind of things. How do I stop this?īoinkology: "I really have no idea why Facebook thinks I'm gay. Yahoo! Answers: I'm listed as straight - why gay ads? Why are the ads displayed on the left hand side of the Facebook sometimes for gay dating/tv? I listed myself as interested in the opposite sex, and nothing in my profile says the word "gay" on it. But a brief search reveals that's not so:Īlbany Lawyer: So I'm a little worried that Facebook keeps showing me this ad. " selection of its users it would be easy to sort the goats from the gay goats. You'd think that by cross-checking the gender and "Interested in. It's comically worse when you consider just how bad Facebook is at identifying who's gay and who isn't.