I appreciate the response, but I definitely did not mean to imply that I don't care about other people's problems, but was simply questioning and hoping to get a more exact and maybe quantitative picture of the control these companies have. Perhaps I made a mistake in thinking too much about my own (important) personal decisions and the information and processes I use to make them.

With respect to the sneaky game purchases are you referring to the stories of facebook letting children make purchases and not reimbursing the parents? Because the ability to control children is much different than the ability to control adults.

The wedding ring for cash is definitely creepy and I can see how that would add additional distress to your friend. But I guess my point is: how much did that ad contribute to your friend deciding to get a divorce? Had she not see that ad and probably other similar ads would she have not gotten a divorce? I think at least attempting to quantify these questions is important when trying to understand the level of control of these companies. We have to go beyond "This company showed a creepy ad(s)" to "This company showed a creepy ad(s) and this is the extent it influenced my final decision."

"letting children make purchases and not reimbursing the parents?" - yes those recent stories. I think it was more than 'letting them make purchases' in what docs came out, it was more 'knowing that they racked up huge bills and often without the knowledge or consent of adults paying the bills' - yet purposely not doing anything about it.. but I did not read the documents only the headlines (admittedly from media companies that have a financial interest in pushing info to be detrimental to time spent getting news there on fbk instead of elsewhere - and just headline scanning - so guilty of that in this instance.

wedding ring sale - yes it led to separation, as it made a backup plan avenue for travel money more of a reality, and the constant reminder seemed to come at a time when reaching out to others for comfort / strength? help in making a decision?

in some ways it could be said that this is great! better to get an ad that is relevant! I know some close, for lack of a better understood description 'mutual feminist friends' - that think this ad is great, and they encouraged leaving, pawning the ring for a good lawyer and travel on the guy's dime - etc.

I know some, for lack of a better term, 'religiously conservative mutual friends" - who would of preferred the "relevant ads" to be marriage counseling services of clergy of local clergy or other similar pro-family things.

This is just one data point, but certainly there are many other, what I would consider abuses of these systems that many of us will never know about.

I for one would like to know more about ads and posts / pages and how they get into the feeds of people with info about alcohol and gambling, even non-money gambling - I think more transparency should be out there for things like this,

and people should be able to publicly report interesting intersections of things like these controversial mind influence images / ads / text - so public debate can occur -

not that I think things should be censored by govs, but certainly people should be more aware of these things, how they could be used to influence less mentally strong people, and people should have options to set settings to avoid some of these things easier.

Its hard to judge these systems when our view of the systems is not very controversial. We have no idea how millions of others see their feeds though.

I applauded fbks decision to make available a list of all ads run by 'whatever group' in light of the election interference investigations. I think we need more tools like this, more transparency.

To see what others or having pushed in front of their eyeballs, it could be shocking.