The chief operating officer of Facebook has announced new measures to police its targeted advertising business, after it was revealed that Facebook technology was allowing people to specifically target ads at users describing themselves as “Jew haters”.
In a public post on the social media site, Sheryl Sandberg wrote of her “disgust… as a Jew, as a mother, and as a human being” at hearing that “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 [Facebook] advertisers.
“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.”
Ms Sandberg also described new measures Facebook would be introducing to “strengthen our ads targeting policies and tools.”
