Facebook Enabled Advertisers to Reach ‘Jew Haters’
Found on Pro Publica on Friday, 15 September 2017
Until this week, when we asked Facebook about it, the world’s largest social network enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of “Jew hater,” “How to burn jews,” or, “History of ‘why jews ruin the world.’”
Facebook’s automated system suggested “Second Amendment” as an additional category that would boost our audience size to 119,000 people, presumably because its system had correlated gun enthusiasts with anti-Semites.
While Facebook blames the algorithm for all this, it claims at the same time that algorithms can successfully stop hate speech online. It's not very reassuring.