Facebook Enabled Advertisers To Reach 'Jew Haters' (propublica.org)

ProPublica is reporting that Facebook "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.'" The organization even went so far as to test these ad categories by paying $30 to target those groups with three "promoted posts" -- in which a ProPublica article or post was displayed in their news feeds. Facebook reportedly approved all three ads within 15 minutes. From the report: After we contacted Facebook, it removed the anti-Semitic categories -- which were created by an algorithm rather than by people -- and said it would explore ways to fix the problem, such as limiting the number of categories available or scrutinizing them before they are displayed to buyers. In all likelihood, the ad categories that we spotted were automatically generated because people had listed those anti-Semitic themes on their Facebook profiles as an interest, an employer or a "field of study." Facebook's algorithm automatically transforms people's declared interests into advertising categories. [ProPublica provides a screenshot of their ad buying process on the company's advertising portal.]

"There are times where content is surfaced on our platform that violates our standards," said Rob Leathern, product management director at Facebook. "In this case, we've removed the associated targeting fields in question. 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."

Comments

Re: In other words

[that this is not und]

Yes, the Left are practically entitled to wear haloes, because you sez so.

You wouldn't happen to be on the left, would you??

The money shot

[PopeRatzo]

The devil is in the details:

Last week, acting on a tip, we logged into Facebook’s automated ad system to see if “Jew hater” was really an ad category. We found it, but discovered that the category — with only 2,274 people in it — was too small for Facebook to allow us to buy an ad pegged only to Jew haters.

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.

The site shows users how Facebook categorizes them. It doesn’t reveal the data it is buying about their offline lives.
Instead, we chose additional categories that popped up when we typed in “jew h”: “How to burn Jews,” and “History of ‘why jews ruin the world.’” Then we added a category that Facebook suggested when we typed in “Hitler”: a category called “Hitler did nothing wrong.” All were described as “fields of study.”

Re: In other words

[Tailhook]

but left wing progressives don't hate Jews .... Israeli blah blah

No, it's Jews. All kinds of left wing groupthinkers (and others) are anti semites. Helen Thomas, Sharpton, Gibson, Oliver Stone, the whole Sheen clan, Assange. All sorts. They get caught in polite company or recorded somehow and then cop-out with the "I meant Israel" line, but they were talking about Jews when they unzipped their fly. The "It's not Jews, it's Israel" line is transparent and you should probably quit playing that card; it only calls you out as the left wing bigot you are.

And no, the fact that you can point out Jews that hate Israel or Judaism doesn't play; self-loathing is a thing, particularly among liberals.

There's been several reports

[rsilvergun]

of antisemitism there, but none the incidence have been traced to left leaning groups and the staff has consistently denounced antisemitism even if they don't outright ban it. As for why banning it isn't helpful, well there's a good reason why right here. Letting them hold their little rallies and seeing how few show up to rally is way more productive then banning them.

Re: In other words

[0123456]

This'll be why the Israeli media in the run-up to the last election was telling US Jews to vote Republican because the Democrats are full of anti-semites.

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/T...

"Blumenthal Sr. is a proud father. He regularly shared his son’s ravings with Clinton, and she shared his delight. In eight separate emails over the course of her tenure in office, Clinton enthusiastically praised his Jew-hating propaganda."

But, hey, SJWs always lie.

Re: In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not antisemitism, that's anti-Zionism. You could claim, for example, that Israel should have been founded on a part of Germany. Ironically, this option was never on the table but would probably have worked out way better than the mess we have now. But then it was inconceivable, I suppose.

Re:In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

Regards to 1984, it's because the book is about Stalinism and the figure of hate is a cipher for Trotsky.

Re:In other words

[mjwx]

Antisemitism has historically been linked to anti-banker and anti-capitalist sentiments

Except for the largest antisemitic group in history, the Nazis who were decidedly right wing. Or the current crop of anti-semites who are also decidedly right wing (Sorry, but nowhere has HAMAS said they want justice and social harmony for Palestinians, their main goal is simply the destruction of Israel, same with Iran as theocracy centralises power, not distributes wealth. Both Iran and Palestine have capitalist systems firmly in place as the place was a centre of trade for millennia before the US even existed).

Dont confuse people being anti-Jewish with being anti-Bankers. They're quite happy to accept white bankers.

Proper leftists have no issues with Jews, Antisemitism tends to be linked to extremist nationalism, which is firmly on the extreme right.

It's no accident that the enemy of the Party in Nineteen Eighty-Four had a Jewish name: Jews were seen as the enemies of socialism (and the Party, like the USSR, still claimed to be socialist in spite of having few traits in common with socialism).

It helps if you read Nineteen Eighty-Four before commenting on it. The society in 1984 (for brevity's sake) still used money (although there were shortages of almost everything). The idea behind IngSoc is that it was neither English, nor Socialist. Pretty sure George Orwell used those exact words in the novel 1984. You see 1984 was a diatribe against Nazi Facism, it centred on the theme of an institutionalised class structure (inner party members -> outer party members -> Proles) with each cast receiving fewer rights than the one above it, institutionalised surveillance and government control as well extreme nationalism and the perpetual war that comes along with it. The use of the Jewish name Goldstein, was just to link it to Nazism and their Antisemitism and the fact that National Socialism has nothing to do with Socialism as we define it.

Orwell left thinly veiled cues of the society he was ripping off in names, for example in Animal Farm, his diatribe against Stalinist Communism he used Trotsky pigs as the farm animal's leaders in reference to Leon Trotsky who was an early Communist party member under Lenin and who Stalin had killed when he took power after Lenins death.

Re:In other words

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

Which, to me, makes this even more confusing. Anti-capitalist AND anti-socialist...so people are claiming that Jews are against capitalism AND socialism? I grok that it is two different groups claiming this...which, to me, just means using Jews as a scapegoat. Both can't be true, it's one or the other.

In reality, it's really tribalism. Jews are one of the oldest surviving "tribes" that still hold a cohesive connection with their ancient past. The Talmudic customs and rituals extend further back than most people can really comprehend; past Babylon, probably into Sumerian time periods. In modern humans, tribalism (IMHO) is linked deeply with "the fear of others), which itself is a remnant of the VERY ancient past with there were multiple human species roaming the earth.