"The fact that hateful terms were even offered as options was totally inappropriate and a fail on our part. "If someone self-identified as a 'Jew-hater' or said they studied how to burn Jews in their profile, those terms showed up as potential targeting options for advertisers," the Facebook COO wrote. (Image: Reuters)To test if these ad categories were real, ProPublica paid $30 to target those groups with three "promoted posts". Facebook approved all three ads within 15 minutes.After ProPublica, a recipient of the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for public service contacted Facebook. "We're adding more human review and oversight to our automated processes," the Facebook COO said.Facebook is also working to create a programme to encourage the people to report potential abuses of its ads system to it directly.

Source: Economic Times September 21, 2017 08:15 UTC