I downloaded my Facebook and Twitter archives.

Facebook is doing better than in the past when their analysis of me was literally random. They do have my interests fairly well done and that appears to be by virtue of which groups I belong to. One oddity – they think I am really into cars. Probably because I have been learning about electric vehicles so that was translated into a generic car interest.

On the political perspective, Facebook appears to think I am both a Democrat and a Republican. Which is certainly, ahem, interesting.

Twitter thinks I speak English and Norwegian and am between the ages of 13 and 54. Well, one of the three is correct.

In addition to their own “targeted interests” they each provide a list of advertisers that have targeted me. This hints at more data behind the scenes. For example, hundreds of car dealers all over the country have submitted information to Facebook with my contact information. I have no idea why.

Also many real estate businesses around the country have submitted my contact information to Facebook.

Others are funny – a pharmaceutical company targeted me – and I know this occurred because I commented – very negatively – on their charging thousands of dollars for a product that others charge about $100 for. Obviously, I have no interest in their product – but they associated my name with having commented, but not the gist of the comment. Now I get their ads!

Yet there appear to be no advertisers for the products and services I might actually be interested in! 

Thus, their targeted advertising appears to miss the mark by a mile.