Facebook may be taking over the world, through Messenger and Instagram (now more popular than Twitter), but you can stop it from taking over your life. You already know how to block companies from stalking you on Facebook, it’s time to find out how to stop Facebook from stalking you on the Internet.
Sure Facebook has been following your every move on websites with “Like” and “Share” buttons since 2010, but it hasn’t used that information yet. That will soon change according to an MIT Technology review report. Tom Simonite reported, “The millions of Facebook ‘Like’ and ‘Share’ buttons that publishers have added to their pages and mobile apps will start funneling data on people’s Web browsing habits into the company’s ad targeting systems.” With this, Facebook will give you targeted ads in Facebook and Instagram, Simonite said.
This is all a part of Facebook’s ongoing master plan to make the site even more of a time suck than it already is by using your Facebook click history and your history on other sites to inform fancy algorithms that make it so that you see stories and videos Facebook knows you will look at.
So how can you stop Facebook? With Apple. Apple’s new iOS 9 provides support for “Content Blockers,” but users would have to download apps to do the blocking. Popular content blockers include 1Blocker and BlockBear. Content blockers stop sites from gaining information about the sites you frequent, what you’re looking at, what you’re searching for and other information. Safari will soon get content blockers when its El Capitan operating system drops later this month.