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SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook says it will restrict how marketers place advertisements on the social network after a report revealed it was possible to target ads to people who have expressed interest in anti-Semitic topics such as "jew hater," "how to burn jews" or "History of 'why jews ruin the world.'"
Saying hate speech has no place on Facebook, the company also said it would prevent users from indicating what type of ads they would like to see.
Pro Publica said it paid $30 to reach nearly 2,300 people with these interests through three "promoted posts" on the self-service ad buying service. It says Facebook approved all three ads within 15 minutes. Most of Facebook's ads are placed through an automated system that allows marketers to select who they'd like to reach.
After the news organization contacted the giant social network, Facebook removed the anti-Semitic categories and says it will remove all self-reported targeting fields "to help ensure that targeting is not used for discriminatory purposes" until it can find a fix.
Facebook says it prohibits attacks based on religion and prohibits advertising that discriminates against people based on their religion.
It's the latest controversy to emerge for Facebook, whose advertising business has been under intense scrutiny since the Silicon Valley company disclosed last week that it discovered approximately $100,000 ads by fake accounts likely out of Russia that sought to sow political discord during the 2016 presidential election.
"However, 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," he said. "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."
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