JUST days after the mass shooting of Jewish congregants in Pittsburg in what has been described as America’s worst-ever an anti-Semitic hate crime, online news publication The Intercept discovered it could place an ad on Facebook appealing to white supremacists.
The publication said it was able to select “white genocide conspiracy theory” as a predefined “detailed targeting” criterion on Facebook to promote two articles to an interest group of 168,000 people “who have expressed an interest [in] or like pages related to White genocide conspiracy theory.”
The paid promotion was approved by Facebook’s advertising department.
The Intercept, which says it follows the protocols of investigative reporting used by ProPublica, a website set up to “expose abuses of power”, contacted the company for comment.
One day after Facebook confirmed The Intercept’s “white genocide” ad buy, the company deleted the category and cancelled the ads.
Facebook spokesman Joe Osborne issued the following statement: “This targeting option has been removed, and we’ve taken down these ads. It’s against our advertising principles and never should have been in our system to begin with. We deeply apologise for this error.”
Mr Osborne added that the “white genocide conspiracy theory” category had been “generated through a mix of automated and human reviews, but any newly added interests are ultimately approved by people.
“We are ultimately responsible for the segments we make available in our systems.”
Healso confirmed that the ad category had been used by marketers, but cited only “reasonable” ad buys targeting “white genocide” enthusiasts, such as news coverage.
Read the article in The Weekly Times.