The company has also paused the availability of some other interest categories while it evaluates its list, a Facebook spokeswoman confirmed in an email after Reuters found “conspiracy theory” was no longer an ad-targeting option. The company eliminated the pseudoscience category from its “detailed targeting” list on Wednesday, the spokeswoman said by phone, after tech news site The Markup showed that it could advertise a post targeting people interested in pseudoscience. More than 78 million Facebook users were interested in “pseudoscience,” it said, citing Facebook’s ad portal. Data gathered by ProPublica in 2016 shows that Facebook assigned “pseudoscience” to users at that time, suggesting the category has been available for several years. The Facebook spokeswoman said in her email that the pseudoscience category should have been removed in a previous review.

Source: The Express Tribune April 24, 2020 05:37 UTC