Facebook, After ‘Fail’ Over Ads Targeting Racists, Makes Changes

Facebook, After ‘Fail’ Over Ads Targeting Racists, Makes Changes
“The fact that hateful terms were even offered as options was totally inappropriate and a fail on our part.”
Ms. Sandberg said the company “never intended or anticipated this functionality being used this way — and that is on us.”
But the company is facing a new wave of scrutiny over how those tools can be misused, particularly after it disclosed this month
that fake accounts based in Russia had purchased more than $100,000 worth of ads on divisive issues in the run-up to the presidential election.
Ms. Sandberg, who was directly addressing the social network’s recent advertising issues for the first time, also said the company would do more to ensure
that offensive content — including that which attacks people for their race or religion — could not be used to target ads.
Last fall, ProPublica reported that advertisers could use those tools to exclude certain races — or what the social network called “ethnic affinities” — from housing
and employment ads, a potential violation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.