Facebook, Google Halt Potential Ads Targeting Anti-Semitic, Hateful Content

Facebook and Google are taking aim at advertisers by disabling their abilities to pinpoint users interested in anti-Semitic subjects and other hate-filled content.
Facebook's restriction comes after news organization ProPublica said Thursdayit paid $30 to have its articles specifically promoted to users who expressed interest in the topics "Jew hater," "How to burn jews" or "History of 'why jews ruin the world.'"
It reportedly took Facebook no more than 15 minutes to approve all three of the targeted ads.
 Facebook enabled advertisers to reach people with anti-Semitic views 2:11
ProPublica said the anti-Semitic categories were created by an algorithm and they were removed by Facebook after the company was made aware. The media outlet added that its test exposed that such anti-Semitic targeting could happen, although it was not clear if it was actually occurring.
Facebook, as part of its review, noted in a post Thursday that it saw a "small percentage" of users entering "offensive responses" in their education or employer fields on their profiles. That allowed ProPublica to go after such users with anti-Semitic subjects — not through an algorithm.
"ProPublica surfaced that these offensive education and employer fields were showing up in our ads interface as targetable audiences for campaigns. We immediately removed them," Facebook said. "Given that the number of people in these segments was incredibly low, an extremely small number of people were targeted in these campaigns."
A Facebook executive reiterated in a statement that hate speech is not permitted on the platform and it bars advertisers from discriminating against people based on religion and other attributes.
Source: nbcnews.com

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