Making sense of algorithmic profiling: user perceptions on Facebook

ABSTRACT

Algorithmic profiling has become increasingly prevalent in many social fields and practices, including finance, marketing, law, cultural consumption and production, and social engagement. Although researchers have begun to investigate algorithmic profiling from various perspectives, socio-technical studies of algorithmic profiling that consider users’ everyday perceptions are still scarce. In this article, we expand upon existing user-centered research and focus on people’s awareness and imaginaries of algorithmic profiling, specifically in the context of social media and targeted advertising. We conducted an online survey geared toward understanding how Facebook users react to and make sense of algorithmic profiling when it is made visible. The methodology relied on qualitative accounts as well as quantitative data from 292 Facebook users in the United States and their reactions to their algorithmically inferred ‘Your Interests’ and ‘Your Categories’ sections on Facebook. The results illustrate a broad set of reactions and rationales to Facebook’s (public-facing) algorithmic profiling, ranging from shock and surprise, to accounts of how superficial – and in some cases, inaccurate – the profiles were. Taken together with the increasing reliance on Facebook as critical social infrastructure, our study highlights a sense of algorithmic disillusionment requiring further research.

KEYWORDS:

• corporate profiling
• surveillance
• data protection
• privacy
• algorithms
• digital footprints

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 While we did not find an up-to-date source for the average age of US-based Facebook users, the age distribution is reported in Statista (2020b). Together with the fact that about 69% of US adults use Facebook (Pew, 2019) and that the median age in the US in general is 38.4 years (Statista, 2021), an average age of Facebook users of about 40 years seems realistic.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fulbright Association; Marie Sklodowska-Curie: [Grant Number 707404]; Norges Forskningsråd: [Grant Numbers 275347 and 299178]; Universität St. Gallen: [International Postdoctoral Fellowship grant 103156]; University of Zurich: [Digital Society Initiative Grant, Research Talent Development Grant from UZH Alumni].

Notes on contributors

Moritz Büchi

Moritz Büchi, PhD (University of Zurich, Switzerland), is a Senior Research and Teaching Associate in the Media Change & Innovation Division at the Department of Communication and Media Research, University of Zurich and Digital Research Consultant for the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti. His research interests include digital media use and its connections to inequality, well-being, dataveillance, algorithmic profiling, privacy, and skills.

Eduard Fosch-Villaronga

Eduard Fosch-Villaronga (Dr., Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate in Law, Science, & Technology) is an Assistant Professor at the eLaw Center for Law and Digital Technologies at Leiden University (NL), where he investigates legal and regulatory aspects of robot and AI technologies, with a special focus on healthcare, diversity, governance, and transparency. Currently, he is the PI of PROPELLING, an FSTP from the H2020 Eurobench project, a project using robot testing zones to support evidence-based robot policies. In 2019, Eduard was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship and published the book Robots, Healthcare, and the Law (Routledge).

Christoph Lutz

Christoph Lutz (Dr., University of St. Gallen, Switzerland) is an associate professor at the Nordic Centre for Internet & Society within the Department of Communication & Culture, BI Norwegian Business School (Oslo). His research interests include digital inequality, online participation, privacy, the sharing economy, and social robots. Christoph has published widely in top-tier journals in this area such as New Media & Society, Information, Communication & Society, Big Data & Society, Social Media + Society, and Mobile Media & Communication.

Aurelia Tamò-Larrieux

Aurelia Tamò-Larrieux (Dr., University of Zurich, Switzerland) is currently a postdoctoral fellow and lecturer at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Her research interests include privacy, especially privacy-by-design, data protection, social robots, automated decision-making, trust in automation, and computational law. Aurelia has published her PhD research on the topic of data protection by design and default for the Internet of Things in the book Designing for Privacy and its Legal Framework (Springer, 2018).

Shruthi Velidi

Shruthi Velidi (Bachelor Cognitive Science, Rice University) is a responsible technology, artificial intelligence, and data policy expert based in New York. Shruthi Velidi was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 2018 by the US-Norway Fulbright Fellowship Foundation, spending a one-year fellowship at the Nordic Centre for Internet and Society, BI Norwegian Business School (Oslo). Her research interests include privacy, algorithmic and corporate profiling, as well as artificial intelligence and policy.