Against the backdrop of calls for greater platform transparency, this exploratory article investigates Meta’s ‘Why Am I Seeing This Ad’ (WAIST) feature, which is positioned as a consumer-level explanation of Meta’s advertising model. Drawing on our own walkthroughs of Facebook and Instagram and data from the Australian Ad Observatory, we find the feature falls short in two ways. First, the explanations do not always align with how the system and its audience-building tools are sold to and used by advertisers. Second, the feature is focused narrowly on single ads and individual users, doing nothing to generate understanding of the patterns and sequences of targeted advertising in relation to other users or over time. We propose both platform practices and independent research strategies that could help to fill this gap between individual explanations, population-level patterns of targeted online advertising and the societal issues associated with it.

中文翻译：

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我为什么会看到这个广告？ Meta 广告系统中自动用户级解释的可供性和局限性


在呼吁提高平台透明度的背景下，这篇探索性文章调查了 Meta 的“我为什么看到这个广告”(WAIST) 功能，该功能定位为对 Meta 广告模式的消费者级别解释。根据我们自己对 Facebook 和 Instagram 的演练以及澳大利亚广告观察站的数据，我们发现该功能在两个方面存在不足。首先，这些解释并不总是与系统及其受众构建工具如何出售给广告商和广告商使用的方式一致。其次，该功能狭隘地关注单个广告和个人用户，没有任何作用来理解与其他用户或随着时间推移的定向广告的模式和序列。我们提出平台实践和独立研究策略，有助于填补个人解释、定向在线广告的人口水平模式以及与之相关的社会问题之间的差距。