How does it work with ads on Facebook?
As our cooperation partner checked4you reports, you cannot completely switch off advertising on Facebook. But you can understand and control why which advertising is shown to you. And you can set who else besides you should know what things you're into. What sounds great is exactly what annoys data protection advocates: This is how Facebook gets to know you very well. With this information that you give to the company Facebook for free, it makes a lot of money: around 11.8 billion US dollars worldwide from advertising alone from January to March 2018! This is shown by the company data on the American Faceook site .
You can have some control over how advertising is handled in your Facebook settings. The network differentiates between three options for showing you advertising that matches your interests:
- Based on data that Facebook receives from advertisers (e.g. “ Custom Audience ”) or collects through your actions somewhere on the Internet.
- Ads outside of Facebook, selected based on your activities on Facebook and other companies that belong to Facebook (e.g. WhatsApp, Instagram, Oculus)
- Advertising on Facebook, which is selected based on your usage behavior on Facebook and other companies that belong to Facebook.
You can set everything via this link, or by clicking on the small triangle in the blue bar at the top right (or on a mobile device on the three horizontal lines on the right under the blue bar), then on “Settings” (or “Account Settings”) and there in the left navigation click on “Ads”.

We'll first look at the “advertising settings”. We will address the other points on the page later in the text. The first area deals with the question of whether you want to see advertising on Facebook from websites or other apps that you have visited and used outside of Facebook. We recommend Not Allowed .
In the second area you determine whether you want to see ads outside of Facebook that are selected based on your Facebook usage. Here too we recommend Not Approved . However, that doesn't mean that Facebook doesn't know what you do on other websites. We explain how this is understandable for the network in the article about Facebook's terms of use .
The third area is called ads based on your clicks on Facebook . Here you can set who on Facebook can see what you like on the network. If you click on the bar, you will see an example of a Facebook ad linked to your name. You can then choose whether only your friends can see your interests or no one can. Check your “Friends” list: Do you really want everyone to see what you like on Facebook? If not, you should Nobody .
How Facebook gets to know you better
The points above the ad settings are particularly interesting. Here you can see what Facebook has already found out about you based on your usage behavior. In your interests, the social network saves all the key terms that you have done something about: “Liked” the page of a TV show, shared a band’s post, watched the trailer of a movie, a website with technology topics visited... the list is already filling up.
If you hover your mouse over an entry (without clicking on it), you will see why the term was assigned to your profile. You can remove it by clicking on the cross. However, we advise against doing this too often. The more precisely you describe your interests, the more valuable your profile becomes for Facebook. You cannot prohibit Facebook from creating this list. It would therefore be pointless to delete them completely (which would require you to remove every single term).
But that's not all: In the Your information there is the Your categories . Here the Facebook algorithm (i.e. the artificial intelligence in the background) assigns you categories that it considers applicable based on your usage behavior.
You can also block some of your profile information from being used for advertising purposes. This can be done in the Your Information under the “About You” tab and looks like this:

Anyone who has read carefully will know that at this point we also recommend clicking all sliders to off.
There is no option to prohibit Facebook from using your name and profile photo for advertisements on websites outside of Facebook (e.g. in the Like button plugin). The network grants itself this right in its extensive data policy , which the operators believe you agree to by simply using Facebook.
The so-called Custom Audience
And then there's the Advertisers You've Interacted With . Among other things, there is the point “ People who have added their contact list to Facebook ”. If you see companies there, you can assume that they have passed on your data to Facebook, which you also use on Facebook. This can be the same email address, for example. Because the process and the data protection issues are not explained very easily, we describe it in a separate article . At this point, in short: You can click away from any entry and thus stop displaying targeted advertising from the corresponding brands. The same applies to the list “ whose website or app you used ”.
Request information from the advertisements

In addition to these settings, you also have various options for advertising The ads have a small arrow that tells you why exactly the ad is being shown to you. You can click there if you find the ad useful. So you take part in market research without actually being told. Because you show Facebook that you would like to see further advertising from this topic in the future. In this way, you provide the network creators with additional data about you that they can, for example, make money from. Since the revelations by Edward Snowden, it is no longer a secret that such findings can also be passed on to government authorities.
There have already been reports of cases in which people were not allowed to enter the USA because they were interested and involved in certain issues that the US government did not like. Anyone who wants to travel to the USA now has to provide their access data for social networks so that the homeland security authorities can search for suspicious posts. And the US isn't the only country that screens people based on social media profiles.

If you click on “Why am I seeing this?” in the selection, a window opens with the answer. In this example it says: “Because Facebook Ref wants to reach people who live in Germany.”
Because you have stated in your profile that you live in Germany and because Facebook determines that you are in Germany based on your internet connection, this advertisement appears. From this window you can also set which general topics you want to see advertising on. Here again: market research.
In our overview of the Facebook Terms of Use you can find out more about how Facebook has been getting your data since January 2015 and what it believes it can do with it.
If you enjoyed this post and value the importance of well-founded information, become part of the exclusive Mimikama Club! Support our work and help us promote awareness and combat misinformation. As a club member you receive:
📬 Special Weekly Newsletter: Get exclusive content straight to your inbox.
🎥 Exclusive video* “Fact Checker Basic Course”: Learn from Andre Wolf how to recognize and combat misinformation.
📅 Early access to in-depth articles and fact checks: always be one step ahead.
📄 Bonus articles, just for you: Discover content you won't find anywhere else.
📝 Participation in webinars and workshops : Join us live or watch the recordings.
✔️ Quality exchange: Discuss safely in our comment function without trolls and bots.
Join us and become part of a community that stands for truth and clarity. Together we can make the world a little better!
* In this special course, Andre Wolf will teach you how to recognize and effectively combat misinformation. After completing the video, you have the opportunity to join our research team and actively participate in the education - an opportunity that is exclusively reserved for our club members!
Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )

