Everything you say can and will be used to ram Facebook advertising down your throat

Since installing the Facebook Lite app that uses very little data and memory space, I have to admit I’m using Facebook more then I probably should be and seeing more advertising for that priveledge. The truth is most of the advertising isn’t all that relevant to me and much of it is very scammy.

Lately the biggest chunk of advertising I’ve seen is for the “Community Solar” that is being aggressively promoted by green marketeers, ever since the state adopted a regulation mid-December that allowed solar farm operators to bill you for their energy produced to the grid. Community solar, allows one to buy “a share” of an industrial solar facility. I see a ton of these days as I’m often talking about off-grid living and the solar panel on my truck, but the Facebook algorithm doesn’t understand the issue. If anything, I’ve been critical of community solar farms, which I think have been permitted with too little scrutiny by regulators, and a somewhat dubious value to the grid or society as a whole. Roof-top solar — closely paired with a load — makes a lot of sense especially on hot summer days and will mean the dirtiest, most fossil-fuel intensive plants are kept off, but I’m not sure I agree with covering farm fields with solar panels and aluminum frames with no decommissioning plans.

The other big advertising I’ve seen a lot of is so-called geothermal heat pumps, that use electricity to pump heat from or into the ground as an alternative to fossil fuel boilers. I guess that’s a good thing if you have a large house as it eliminates on-site fossil burning, and carbon emissions but most heat pumps also consume an increadible amonut of energy — often doubling the electricity consumption of a modern suburban house, which is a lot of energy that still to this day is largely produced by burning fossil fuels, mostly natural gas in New York. Maybe you come out ahead with heat pumps, even if with the loses of converting gas into energy, but I’m skepitical. I just don’t think the standard suburban way of living in sustainable even if you green wash it. I guess it might be more reasonable if you also had a large grid-tied solar array on your home, but even that is unlikely to fill all the energy-hungry needs of geothermal heat pump.

Beyond all the green advertising I see being pushed down my throat with Facebook, there have been a lot of sponsored posts on financial services, but most of the ones being sold as “scamy” and of dubious value. There are the category of apps that are suppposed to make it easier to budget, those suggesting financial products you should buy before your 36th birthday, those trying to claim to be a better good then what I already have. Information is never a bad thing, but I think I’m an informed consumer and the products I already are investing in or have purchased are a better deal then what the marketers are selling. I don’t like the dishonesty of nature of those ads, trying to trick you into buying a product or service that really isn’t in your best interest. I think it’s good to care about money, to invest, work towards a better future, but I don’t like what I see in the ads.

Additionally, there is the category of ads that follow you around the internet of products you have looked at before, some of which you have already bought. Sometimes I will look at a product have seriously, mostly because I want to know the cost or what is out there to meet a need. Sometimes then I will build thing at home or find another way to make it work for less money. Other times, there are just interesting things out there to check out. Doesn’t mean I ever plan to buy it. Or even worse is advertisements for things you’ll already bought but they are continuing to push to you, as the algorithms just aren’t smart enough to do know the difference.