Meta’s ‘Activity from Other Businesses’

Yash Garg: A friend pointed me to this option in Meta Accounts Center called “Activity from other businesses”, which shows “activity sent from other businesses or organizations to show you relevant content.” Their main help page doesn’t even work in my region. If you dig around in your Meta account privacy settings, you can turn this feature off. While you are there, though, you might take a scroll through the audience-based advertising list. These are companies that have, most often for me, “uploaded or used a list” of email addresses or phone numbers. In my case, this is hundreds of businesses — some of which I recognize or can see why they would have my contact information, and many of which I have never heard of. Advertisers are supposed to have permission to use this information, of course, but there is basically no way for me to confirm whether I gave permission or report that I did not. Restricting further use is also comically unfriendly: it is a button two levels deep and,…