Colin Lecher reports:
… data from The Markup’s Citizen Browser project—which collects Facebook data from thousands of users—shows how precise and wide-ranging that targeting is. Though Facebook does not offer advertisers categories that explicitly identify people’s health conditions, The Markup identified dozens of ads for prescription pharmaceuticals targeted at people with “interests” in topics like “bourbon,” “oxygen,” and “Diabetes mellitus awareness.”
Indeed, The Markup found, “awareness” of a disease is a frequent proxy for illness in targeting decisions made by advertisers.
Read more on The Markup.