Reply to Eckles et al.: Facebook
Matz, Kosinski, Nave and Stillwell reply to a comment by Eckles and colleagues. The commenters point out that the optimisation algorithms of Facebook's advertising platform are a potential confound of campaign outcomes. The authors agree in general that such algorithms could threaten the validity of field studies, but argue that it is unlikely they account for the pattern of results in the original research. They address the commenters' point about differences in age and gender distributions between target groups.
Matz, Kosinski, Nave and Stillwell reply to a comment by Eckles and colleagues. The commenters point out that the optimisation algorithms of Facebook's advertising platform are a potential confound of campaign outcomes. The authors agree in general that such algorithms could threaten the validity of field studies, but argue that it is unlikely they account for the pattern of results in the original research. They address the commenters' point about differences in age and gender distributions between target groups.
Written from the abstract as shown on the OpenAlex record, read 2026-11-04.
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s optimization algorithms are highly unlikely to explain the effects of psychological targeting.' PNAS, 115(23), E5256-E5257. doi:10.1073/pnas.1806854115.