Tips and Tricks: Is it possible to turn off ads on Facebook?

Ahmedabad. 03 Mar 2020, Tuesday

Advertising is free to use the Internet for free, but it is important to see that ads do not use us. As with all things, ads found on the Internet are like a double-edged sword. Without it, free access to the Internet is not possible, and therefore, advertising is not free to accept ads.

All we can do is decide whether to show ads that we are interested in seeing, or if Google-Facebook shows ads at will.

That means advertising can be useful and even boring - in both cases if we understand its settings it seems to work!

Speaking of Facebook, Facebook decides what information we have to put on others, what we have posted and what action we have taken on other people's posts.

Explaining this, Facebook itself says that if you use travel websites or apps more, you will see ads for hotel deals on Facebook!

If you turn off such interest-based ads, we will only stop taking notice of our surfing while showing ads, it will not change the proportion of ads. Keep in mind that if you like a page on Facebook, your name may appear in the advertisement on Facebook of that page.

More importantly, if you like any business page, anyone on that page - pay attention again - can post to your friends with a title that you like. Facebook splits next to such a post simply by mentioning the 'Relayed post'!

That means Facebook can tell all over the world that you like or post a post that you have never even seen.

That is, if you are a vegetarian but have liked the business page of a restaurant chain serving both veg and non-food items, and if a chicken burger post is promoted from that page, it may be possible for your friends to see that you have liked the post. Plus, such an ad is never shown to you by Facebook, so it can be jarring when a friend informs you!

It's hard to believe but if you share a link to any webpage with other friends that can be liked on Facebook, Facebook automatically considers the page you like. That means if you strongly disagree with the information displayed on a website and you share the page link with your friends to present that objection to your friends, Facebook still likes it! The problem with Facebook is that its policies, settings, etc. are changing very fast, so things written here can change at any time.

However, with all of this in mind, advertising in Facebook is worth checking out.

Go to settings in the Facebook app on the PC or in the mobile. Type 'Aids' in the search box above and search.

Go to 'Ad Preferences' from here. In it, you'll find which topics Facebook considers to be of interest to you. If anything seems objectionable here, it can be selected and removed.

You can also see which business ads you clicked on. If you have a bad experience with any of these, it can be reported.

You can also see which business has uploaded your contact information on Facebook! The topic of which you do not want to see ads can be decided here. Apart from this you can find a lot of 'amazing' information here.

In the eyes of advertisers, these are all new ways of smart advertising (which is hugely effective too!) And as users, we may have some objections. That is why it is like understanding the settings of a double-edged sword!