By now, most people know that apps and services track their activity across the internet — to the point that it is hard to surprise anyone with the type of information that tech companies know about them. But here’s one that just might cause you to raise an eyebrow: According to an investigation from Reveal and The Markup, Facebook is collecting information from abortion seekers and allowing anti-abortion organizations to target them.
Here’s how it works: When you visit a website, trackers on that site can report information about you to Facebook. That information can then be used to target certain ads and content that appear on your Facebook feed. What Reveal and The Markup found was that hundreds of crisis pregnancy centers — anti-abortion clinics often operated by religious organizations — collect information about potential patients who visit their sites and share that information with Facebook. That allows these anti-abortion organizations to then serve content on Facebook and across the web aimed at convincing people not to receive abortion care.
