Signal’s smartass ad exposes Facebook’s creepy data collection

Facebook is notorious for generating creepily personal ads from reams of user data, but most people don’t understand how the system works. Now, an attack ad campaign by Signal has shone some light on the opaque surveillance dragnet. The privacy-focused messaging app tried to buy “multi-variant targeted” ads on Instagram to show what parent company Facebook knows about its users. The campaign aimed to expose how Facebook’s array of services harvest user information to personalize ads. Advertisers can use the enormous range of data points to target audiences based on their location, age, demographics, interests, and behavior. [Read: 3 new technologies ecommerce…

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