Facebook has announced it has tightened criteria for its ad targeting technology, after a report found it could be used to easily target anti-Semites.
Until last week, Facebook allowed advertisers to target the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who showed interest in the topics of “Jew hater,” “How to burn jews,” or, “History of ‘why jews ruin the world’”, according to ProPublica.
To find out if these ad categories were the real deal, ProPublica forked out $30 to target those groups with three “promoted posts” using its articles.
ProPublica claims Facebook signed off on all three ads within 15 minutes, and proceeded to get in touch with the social media giant to issue a ‘please explain’.
The social media giant responded by removing the anti-Semitic categories after being notified by ProPublica, and in a post yesterday on her page, Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg (a Jew herself) announced further measures.
Read the full article by Huntley Mitchell at B&T.