"2. Entertained by how HN thinks ad targeting works (we don't want to know everything about YOU. we want to know basic info about all of our users.)"
I'm sorry but this sounds so naive to me. As you say in your last paragraph Facebook was tracking a ton of info about everyone. This is why a lot of people distrust Facebook. You might find this entertaining but this happens when you spy on people. We can't know what Facebook does with the data.
There are also people who targeted a friend as prank and succeeded. So it is possible to target very specific people. With enough money you can do a lot of evil with this (Cambride Analytica).
Because we don't know how they use the data a lot of people now actively block requests to Facebook when they visit a website.
You might want to look up what was up with Cambridge Analytica - Michael Lewis has one of episodes in Against the Rules (podcast) - it's a good place to start.
There was nothing at all. No predictive power. Total waste of money and it's funny this example keeps coming up
I'm sorry but this sounds so naive to me. As you say in your last paragraph Facebook was tracking a ton of info about everyone. This is why a lot of people distrust Facebook. You might find this entertaining but this happens when you spy on people. We can't know what Facebook does with the data.
There are also people who targeted a friend as prank and succeeded. So it is possible to target very specific people. With enough money you can do a lot of evil with this (Cambride Analytica).
Because we don't know how they use the data a lot of people now actively block requests to Facebook when they visit a website.
I don't think this is very entertaining.