Facebook thinks it knows which party I'll vote for in an election—the Irish and French elections that is. To figure out what ads you see in your feed, Facebook collects all of the information you willingly put into its system and constructs a kind of shadow profile of topics that will decide what advertisers will target you. You can find out in the Ad Preferences page.
It's not a a full-proof system. I am neither an Irish or French citizen, yet I will apparently see ads that partisans of Sinn Fein and the French Radical Party see. That's hardly the only odd topic listed in just the short excerpt from the Lifestyle and Culture section of the Ad Preferences page. I can see how Eastern Time Zone or the Potomac River make sense due to where I live, but ancient civilization Sumer, "Morning" and whatever Anchor refers to is very odd. And Life as a either a lifestyle or culture seems somewhat redundant.
In terms of my actual country, Facebook pegs people less on party and more on where you fall on the conservative to liberal spectrum. There at least, Facebook seems to have a better idea of my thinking, though I do my best to limit political interaction on social media out of sheer frustration. While it's slightly unnerving to see yet another example of Mark Zuckerberg possibly knowing you better than you know yourself, I'm reassured by the clumsiness of this particular manifestation of Facebook's data hoard, with it's amusing errors. Unless I end up moving to Ireland or France soon, and it's impressively predicting my future.
