Facebook addresses the impact of our products on society

Monday, 23rd April, 2018

Hard Questions is a series from Facebook that addresses the impact of our products on society.

By Rob Goldman, Vice President, Ads

To build a product that connects people across continents and cultures, we need to make sure everyone can afford it. Advertising lets us keep Facebook free. But we aren’t blind to the challenges this model poses. It requires a steadfast commitment to privacy.

So our promise is this: we do not tell advertisers who you are or sell your information to anyone. That has always been true. We think relevant advertising and privacy aren’t in conflict, and we’re committed to doing both well.

We know that many of you have questions about how we use your information in advertising – and what control you have over it. I’ll address some of the most frequent questions we get, but first I’ll lay out the basic mechanics of Facebook advertising.

There are a few ways that advertisers can reach you with ads on Facebook:

1. Information from your use of Facebook. When you use Facebook, you can choose to share things about yourself like your age, gender, hometown, or friends. You can also click or like posts, Pages, or articles. We use this information to understand what you might be interested in and hopefully show you ads that are relevant. If a bike shop comes to Facebook wanting to reach female cyclists in Atlanta, we can show their ad to women in Atlanta who liked a Page about bikes. But here’s what’s key: these businesses don’t know who you are. We provide advertisers with reports about the kinds of people seeing their ads and how their ads are performing, but we don’t share information that personally identifies you. You can always see the ‘interests’ assigned to you in your ad preferences, and if you want, remove them.
2. Information that an advertiser shares with us. In this case, advertisers bring us the customer information so they can reach those people on Facebook. These advertisers might have your email address from a purchase you made, or from some other data source. We find Facebook accounts that match that data, but we don’t tell the advertiser who matched. In ad preferences you can see which advertisers with your contact information are currently running campaigns – and you can click the top right corner of any ad to hide all ads from that business.
3. Information that websites and apps send to Facebook. Some of the websites and apps you visit may use Facebook tools to make their content and ads more relevant and better understand the results of their ad campaigns. For example, if an online retailer is using Facebook Pixel, they can ask Facebook to show ads to people who looked at a certain style of shoe or put a pair of shoes into their shopping cart. If you don’t want this data used to show you ads, you can turn it off in ad preferences. My colleague David Baser shared more detail about how we, and others in the industry, use this information in a post earlier this week.

Now for some of the questions we hear most frequently around our advertising practices:

If I’m not paying for Facebook, am I the product?

No. Our product is social media – the ability to connect with the people that matter to you, wherever they are in the world. It’s the same with a free search engine, website or newspaper. The core product is reading the news or finding information – and the ads exist to fund that experience.

If you’re not selling advertisers my data, what are you giving them?

We sell advertisers space on Facebook – much like TV or radio or newspapers do. We don’t sell your information. When an advertiser runs a campaign on Facebook, we share reports about the performance of their ad campaign. We could, for example, tell an advertiser that more men than women responded to their ad, and that most people clicked on the ad from their phone.

Why does Facebook need all this data?

As people use Facebook, they share information and content – whether it’s liking a post, sharing a photo or updating their profile. We use this information to give you a better service. For example, we can show you photos from your closest friends at the top of your News Feed, or show you articles about issues that matter most to you, or suggest groups that you might want to join.

Data also helps us show you better and more relevant ads. And it lets advertisers reach the right people, including millions of small businesses and non-profits who rely on Facebook every day to reach people that might be interested in their product or cause. Data lets a local coffee shop survive and grow amid larger competitors by showing ads to customers in its area. And it lets a non-profit promote a diabetes fundraiser to those interested in the cause.

What if I don’t want my data used to show me ads?

You can’t opt out of ads altogether because ads are what keep Facebook free, but you do have different options to control how your data can and can’t be used to show you ads. They’re all found in ad preferences.

You can decide which of your profile fields you want used for ad targeting in the Information section under “About You.” You can remove yourself from interests under “Interests” and categories under “Your Categories.” You can turn off ads that use data from apps or websites that you visit in the Ads Settings section under “Ads based on use of websites and apps.”

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Digital advertising is relatively new and has radically changed since the early days of banner ads on the top of a website. But the promise of digital advertising is that it can show you ads for products, services, and causes that may actually be of interest to you. And for small businesses, it levels the playing field and lets them reach an audience that they never could have before. You get better ads, advertisers get a tailored audience and everyone on Facebook gets our firm commitment to privacy.

Leadership

Mark Zuckerberg

Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Mark is the founder, chairman and CEO of Facebook, which he founded in 2004. Mark is responsible for setting the overall direction and product strategy for the company. He leads the design of Facebook's service and development of its core technology and infrastructure. Mark studied computer science at Harvard University before moving the company to Palo Alto, California.

Sheryl Sandberg

Chief Operating Officer

Sheryl Sandberg is chief operating officer at Facebook, overseeing the firm's business operations. Prior to Facebook, Sheryl was vice president of Global Online Sales and Operations at Google, chief of staff for the United States Treasury Department under President Clinton, a management consultant with McKinsey & Company, and an economist with the World Bank.

Sheryl received a BA summa cum laude from Harvard University and an MBA with highest distinction from Harvard Business School.

Sheryl is the co-author of Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy with Wharton professor and bestselling author Adam Grant. She is also the author of the bestsellers Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead and Lean In for Graduates. She is the founder of the Sheryl Sandberg & Dave Goldberg Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works to build a more equal and resilient world through two key initiatives, LeanIn.Org and OptionB.Org. Sheryl serves on the boards of Facebook, the Walt Disney Company, Women for Women International, ONE, and SurveyMonkey.

Sheryl lives in Menlo Park, California, with her son and daughter.

David Wehner

Chief Financial Officer

Dave is chief financial officer of Facebook, where he leads the finance, facilities and information technology teams. Prior to becoming CFO in June 2014, Dave served as Facebook’s vice president of Corporate Finance and Business Planning. From 2010 through 2012, Dave served as Chief Financial Officer of Zynga Inc. Before Zynga, Dave was a Managing Director at Allen & Company, an investment bank focused on media and technology, which he joined in 2001.

Dave holds a B.S. in Chemistry from Georgetown University, and a M.S. in Applied Physics from Stanford University.

Mike Schroepfer

Chief Technology Officer

Mike Schroepfer is chief technology officer at Facebook. In that role, he leads the development of the technology strategies and teams that will enable Facebook to connect billions of people around the world and make significant breakthroughs in fields like artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Before Facebook, Mike was vice president of engineering at Mozilla Corporation, where he led the global and open product development process behind Firefox. Mike was formerly a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems, which acquired his company, CenterRun. He began his career working at various startups, including a digital effects software startup where he developed software that has been used in several major motion pictures. Mike holds a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in computer science from Stanford University and has filed two US patents.

Chris Cox

Chief Product Officer

Chris leads Facebook’s Product Management, Design, and Marketing functions globally. He is responsible for the core products and features that shape the social experience for everyone who uses Facebook. Chris joined Facebook in 2005 as a software engineer and helped build the first versions of key Facebook features, including News Feed. He then became director of human resources, where he set the tone for Facebook's culture and drove the development of its mission, values and people strategy.

Chris holds a bachelor’s degree in symbolic systems with a concentration in artificial intelligence from Stanford University.

Board of Directors

• Mark Zuckerberg Founder, Chairman and CEO, Facebook
• Marc Andreessen Co-founder and General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
• Susan Desmond-Hellmann CEO, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• Reed Hastings Chairman and CEO, Netflix
• Erskine Bowles President Emeritus, the University of North Carolina
• Peter Thiel Partner, Founders Fund
• Sheryl Sandberg COO, Facebook
• Jan Koum Founder and CEO, WhatsApp
• Kenneth I. Chenault Chairman and Managing Director, General Catalyst