How did Facebook allow you to be the target of known brands and political groups?

Facebook has expanded its advertising device over time, constantly collecting details about its users and turning these details into marked data points. As it grew up, however, the company has attracted monitoring of privacy lawyers, regulators and lawmakers worldwide.

When Facebook introduced its platform “ad” in 2007, advertisers could target people who volunteered as part of the platform, reports the New York Times “ ”, Periscope broadcast.

In 2009, Facebook added several features, including the ability for users to click on the “lic” button for postings in their news, which refined the list of interests that advertisers could target.

The company also presented ways for advertisers to target friends of those who had interacted with their brands and to target advertising people according to their age or birthday.

Three years later, Facebook introduced “Custom Audiences”, a function that allowed companies to upload their people's lists as a group target. A retail salesman, for example, could upload a list of customers and advertise what they had recently bought.

Of course, companies were not limited to using their clients' lists. They can also upload consumer lists purchased by third-party marketing firms known as data agents.

Data agents collect extensive information from public data, vendors selling client information and other sources.

Until this time, advertising as a target for people on the basis of their interests became a common practice of online advertising, where traders and researchers began knocking to further that practice.

In 2013, a researcher working for the consultant firm “Cambridge Analytica” released a personality quiz that people could get on Facebook, with results showing how open, conscious, extravert, nice or neurotic.

The researcher compared the quizi results to what they enjoyed on Facebook, ultimately to determine which interests corresponded to personality traits. Using this method, which was developed by researchers at Cambridge University, reaching out for certain interests, was now equal to the goal of personality traits.

Last hint that “Cambridge Analytica” collected information from 87 million Facebook users, renewed concerns about privacy on the platform, and urged the company to pledge to improve its privacy and transparency tools and to review at least one aspect of the “ad” practices.

The changes coincide with the introduction of a new law on the European Union, the General Code of Data Protection.

The law, which will take effect next month, requires technology companies to limit the collection of user data for what they need to perform services and to get consumer consent for how their data will be used and shared.

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook, has said the company will offer all its users the same privacy required under European law, regardless of where they live./Periscopi/