Facebook rolls out ‘Link History’ to allegedly use data for targeted ads

Facebook, the main company in Meta’s portfolio right now, has been having a good time off late in the market as well as in its business because of some changes they have made to the platform and we know that the platform which was once seen as a declining one is growing once again and this is also due to the efforts Elon Musk has made in ruining the Twitter/X platform ever since he took charge of it. Also, the fact is that people were and still are seeing good response from Facebook as compared to other platforms and e-commerce companies are hot right now on the platform along with video content creators.

However, Facebook is facing the challenge of cookieless future and stricter privacy laws and it also saw the effect when Apple turned off cookies on their devices which impacted Facebook’s revenue quite a lot. Due to this reason, Facebook has come up with the idea of archiving link history on Android and iOS and it is turned on by default for everyone. While you do have the option of turning link history off, this is definitely a well-thought-out move by the company to get as much link history as possible so that they can offer targeted ads.

Basically, link history is the data of links that the user visited out of Facebook so that the company can know where the user went and offer targeted ads based on their visits which would increase their CTR and also attract advertisers to the platform even more. A Facebook spokesperson said, “You can choose to turn link history on or off at any time. When you turn link history off, we will immediately clear your link history and you will no longer be able to see any links that you’ve visited. Additionally, we won’t save your link history or use it to improve your ads across Meta technologies. When you turn link history off, it may take Meta up to 90 days to complete the deletion process. When link history is on, we may use link history information from Facebook’s Mobile Browser to improve your ads across Meta technologies.”