Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg admitted Wednesday her company failed to stop an ad-targeting feature that allowed advertisers to target “Jew Haters.”
A recent investigative report uncovered that advertisers were able to cater their messages to those who have expressed interest in anti-Semitic topics on the social media platform, including “Jew hater,” “How to burn Jews,” or, “History of ‘why Jews ruin the world.'”
“The fact that hateful terms were even offered as options was totally inappropriate and a fail on our part. We removed them and when that was not totally effective, we disabled that targeting section in our ad systems,” Sandberg said in a Facebook post.
The company announced last week that it was shutting down the targeting option but announced Wednesday the feature would become available again but in a more limited fashion. Facebook reinstated 5,000 previously banned options, including “nurse” and “teacher.” Terms Sandberg says are the most commonly used and have all been manually approved by a human.
Sandberg announced the company is clarifying its advertising policy and tightening its procedures to remove content that violates its community standards. Under Facebook’s community standards content that “directly attacks people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender or gender identity, or disabilities or diseases” is prohibited.
New targeting options will not be added without manual approval, according to a Facebook spokesperson.
She announced plans for a more direct reporting system that will allow its users to flag potential abuses of its advertising system in a manner similar to how technical issues are reported.
“If we discover unintended consequences in the future, we will be unrelenting in identifying and fixing them as quickly as possible,” Sandberg added.
