This report was originally published on September 14, 2017.
by Julia Angwin, Madeleine Varner and Ariana Tobin
Want to market Nazi memorabilia, or recruit marchers for a far-right
rally? Facebook’s self-service ad-buying platform had the right audience
for you.
Until this week, when we asked Facebook about it, the world’s largest
social network enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news
feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of
“Jew hater,” “How to burn jews,” or, “History of ‘why jews ruin the
world.’”
To test if these ad categories were real, we paid $30 to target those
groups with three “promoted posts” — in which a ProPublica article or
post was displayed in their news feeds. Facebook approved all three ads
within 15 minutes.
After we contacted Facebook, it removed the anti-Semitic categories —
which were created by an algorithm rather than by people — and said it
would explore ways to fix the problem, such as limiting the number of
categories available or scrutinizing them before they are displayed to
buyers.
Click here for the full article.
Source: ProPublica
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