The policy change follows an embarrassing report by ProPublica on Thursday that the company’s ad-buying system allowed advertisers to target users interested in antisemitic subjects. And we did not find it ourselves – and that is also on us.”The announcement and mea culpa come amid increased scrutiny of Facebook’s advertising tools. The bigoted categories appeared as options for ad targeting because the company used an algorithm to generate the options based on what users wrote in their user profiles about their education and work history. About 2,300 Facebook users wrote on their profiles that they studied “Jew hater” in college, for example, automatically generating the phrase as an advertising target. Privacy advocates have long raised concerns about the degree of targeting made possible by Facebook’s vast trove of personal data.

Source: The Guardian September 20, 2017 21:33 UTC