Looks like Facebook (NASDAQ:$FB) is having a bit of a public-relations crisis. Until this week, the social networking site offered numerous anti-Semitic advertising categories, which allowed advertisers to reach the almost 2,300 people who expressed an interest in the following topics: “Jew hater,” “How to burn Jews,” and ‘History of ‘why Jews ruin the world.’”
ProPublica reported the news on Thursday, September 14. Facebook – which was founded in 2004 – has now removed the categories after reports and the public made the company aware these sorts of categories exist on their site. Here’s what Rob Leathern, Facebook’s product management director, had to say:
“There are times where content is surfaced on our platform that violates our standards. In this case, we’ve removed the associated targeting fields in question. We know we have more work to do, so we’re also building new guardrails in our product and review processes to prevent other issues like this from happening in the future.”
ProPublica tried out the tactic, as journalists from the site posted three ads through Facebook that targeted users of Anti-Semitic topics. All three were approved in 15 minutes.
As if this weren’t enough, last week Facebook announced that it had sold roughly $100,000 of ads to a pro-Kremlin Russian propaganda company which sought to target United States voters during the 2016 presidential election.
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