Project Description: We created ten fake Facebook accounts to see how "likes" and friends would affect advertising. After some initial difficulties, we discovered that Facebook only advertises when a user has either friends or a location. Other interesting results include one of the accounts receiving friend requests from real people and another account being discovered by Facebook as a fake. This experiment led to us to question the right Facebook has to use personal information for the sake of advertising. To explore these topics, we created four short videos that personify Facebook for the purpose of drawing an analogy between Facebook and stalkers. The videos ask the question: why are people so concerned with concealing their data from other individuals but not from massive corporations like Facebook?
Presentation:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1CQu1w90woM-nibEnbEji4QlhLIHnNAyf9eQcCJgXca0/edit?usp=sharing
Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5ddI9glGt8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW-1C5bulbo
In order to better understand Facebook advertising, we created several fake accounts under controlled conditions.