Facebook. My big brother

I spent about 25 years in advertising and kinda have some knowledge about audiences and messaging to them. Most of that time was spent with traditional media like TV and radio and then when the internet came along and advertising was available there, we're only talking 25 years, things got a lot more refined.  Not that buying advertising was reduced to smarter people, but that there were certain programmatic tricks that you can use when buying online. It's all electronic and the speed of being able to serve up an advertisement to a viewer or relevant to a user increased dramatically so in the split second that you online the communication between your IP address or you and sign in is transmitted to an advertising server and bingo comes back an advertisement tailored to you.

I have ALS and with some frequency read about the topic either by looking it up online or following groups and research that appear in my normal feeds. Now they're only about 20,000 of us in the United States with ALS and we number a whole lot less than than utilize Facebook only because a byproduct of ALS is the prospect that you lose the ability to move your fingers so typing or interacting becomes a real challenge.

I asked some of my friends if they had ever seen this ALS advertisement and no one else had. Some with chronic illnesses saw this ad in a slightly different form and one that targeted their affliction.

When I tapped on this advertisement a filled out form popped up with all my contact information filled in. Didn't have to do a thing.

I'm a little irked that a my personal information would be tapped I never gave out this permission about my Facebook usage although I understand that's how it works. I'm more than a little testy that Facebook would serve up my private information to the advertiser so I could fill in my form without lifting a finger.

I actually grew up thinking that advertising was somewhat of an honorable profession whereby information, product information to be specific, will be displayed to people who might be interested in it. I no longer think advertising is honorable when it gets to this point of personal.

I have a big brother in real life. I don't need another one online.