Most people are probably aware of the fact that Facebook collects all kinds of data about the habits and preferences of its users. What many of them don’t know is what kind of information Facebook is interested in.
The company does offer a way to find out, but it’s quite complicated and not very illuminating. The good news is that there’s a faster way to figure it out: “What Facebook thinks you like” is a Chrome browser extension offered by the US foundation Pro Publica.
A Facebook like symbol on a Silicon Valley wall. (File photo credit: “Ole Spata / dpa”.)
If you log on to Facebook and start the program after installing it, it will list the interests collected by Facebook. This includes pages of people or groups you’ve marked with a “Like,” but also contains categories defined by Facebook itself.
“Frequent travelers” is one of those categories, used for people who often sign in from different countries. The extension also allows you to rate the relevance of the displayed categories.
The aim of the program is to gain more insight into the data collected by commercial entities such as Facebook. Pro Publica is a non-profit journalism initiative based in the United States.
