These newspapers need to stop stealing my stories

In the Washington Post today, there's a story where some woman complains that the ads that run alongside her Facebook profile suggested that she needed to lose weight.

In the ad, there's a picture of a woman with a muffin top, which I'm not gonna lie, I'll occasionally find somewhat attractive, if it's not too disgusting-looking, and if the woman has a nice big set of cans.

If you notice, it's seemingly impossible for a woman to have boobs that are really big, without carrying some excess fat somewhere on her body. That is, unless she's got big fake ones. Which is perfectly fine with me. It's just that you don't find a lot of women under the age of 30 with fake cans.

Anyhoo, underneath the picture of the girl with the love handles, it says, "Read and learn how you can shrink your waist." And presumably, the ad leads to a site that sells diet pills or some such.

If this sounds familiar, it's because I did a similar story the other day, about how Facebook was running ads alongside my profile with the headline, "27 and still single?" Which of course struck me as odd, since I am 27 and single as a mofo. I wondered if Facebook wasn't using the information in my profile to target these ads.

As it turns out, and as we learn in this story in the Washington Post, they were.

To with:

Facebook targets its advertising to users based on the information in their profiles. This is not a new concept, of course. Kids usually see toy ads while they watch Nickelodeon, and women get ads for birth control pills as they watch Lifetime.

But Facebook's data miners know much more about us because we tell them a whole lot more. Facebook knows my birthday, my relationship status and which book I'm reading, among other personal tidbits. The site started turning this information into dollar signs last November with the launch of Facebook Ads, which targets users' presumed areas of interest (or psychological soft spots).

In the story in the Washington Post, the writer actually goes so far as to report the ad to Facebook, using this system they have for providing feedback on their ads. Given a choice between labeling the ad misleading, offensive, or pornographic, she chooses offensive, even though she claims not to have any kind of issues with body-image.

Likely story.

Of course, she never states anywhere in the story whether or not she could stand to tighten up a bit right in the midsection, but what non-high school-age woman couldn't? At least in my story, I admitted I could use a woman. (At least once a day!)

Just think, the Washington Post could have run my story on this, and it would have been that much more timely and that much less full of shit. I would've even cut them a much better rate that whatever they're paying this ignorant slut.

Checkit: Facebook Ads Target You Where It Hurts [Washington Post]