Of course it’s tailored. What I’m saying is that modern machine learning algorithms have superhuman ability to see statistical connections between features of a dataset.
Log into your Google account and go here:
Account settings: Your browser is not supported. to see what Google has figured out about you. Chances are there’ll be some weird stuff there, or the categories are quite vague, but generally they’re pretty good with their guesses. They can take samples of search patterns and terms, where and how you log in, how often, etc etc and compare them to millions of other users and spot things like “People who google Coventry City in Coventry are probably Coventry City fans.” From this they can discover personas that share traits, could be “football fan” could be “late night compulsive Wikipedia user” could be “Male aged 65+” they can then run ads and randomise headlines, images, times, locations and devices until they find the best combinations that make you click.
Now take all that a Google can do, which is standard Degree level machine learning, and apply it to what Facebook *knows* about you, not guesses. It knows your exact age, sex, birthplace, school, who your friends are, where you go, what TV shows you like. It’s on another level. Facebook and Google are two of the world leaders in machine learning, their algorithms will be light years ahead of the simple examples I’ve given.
The reason you think Facebook is listening is two fold:
1) when you have a conversation about something you experience Frequency Bias where for a period afterwards you will notice related things in the world. Like when you buy a car and suddenly everyone’s driving them. You will have seen relevant ads previously, and ignored them because they weren’t relevant. Your brain filters out an awful lot of noise without you noticing
2) There will be signals in your life that hint you’re going to be looking for something soon. Stupid example let’s say you google pregnancy test, 9 months later you’ll probably be looking for a baby monitor. Or maybe it’s 8 months, or 10, the data will show. And it’ll show specifically for people like you. Maybe CCFC fans are overly cautious and buy early? Maybe people who like Star Trek buy a particular brand of baby formula. The algorithms will find that connection.
So what seems completely organic to you is just a mix of forgetting all the conversations you’ve had where Facebook didn’t advertise and irrelevant ads, forgetting the leading data you’ve fed the system to make the prediction, and thinking you’re more special than you are, when really you’re just like every other balding baking obsessed CCFC following midget donkey porn fan.