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Facebook Allowed Advertisers To Target Users Interested in 'White Genocide' (theintercept.com)

Multiple readers have shared a report: Apparently fueled by anti-Semitism and the bogus narrative that outside forces are scheming to exterminate the white race, Robert Bowers murdered 11 Jewish congregants as they gathered inside their Pittsburgh synagogue, federal prosecutors allege. But despite long-running international efforts to debunk the idea of a "white genocide," Facebook was still selling advertisers the ability to market to those with an interest in that myth just days after the bloodshed. Earlier this week, The Intercept was able to select "white genocide conspiracy theory" as a pre-defined "detailed targeting" criterion on the social network to promote two articles to an interest group that Facebook pegged at 168,000 users large and defined as "people who have expressed an interest or like pages related to White genocide conspiracy theory." The paid promotion was approved by Facebook's advertising wing.

After we contacted the company for comment, Facebook promptly deleted the targeting category, apologized, and said it should have never existed in the first place. Our reporting technique was the same as one used by the investigative news outlet ProPublica to report, just over one year ago, that in addition to soccer dads and Arianna Grande fans, "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."" The report exposed how little Facebook was doing to vet marketers, who pay the company to leverage personal information and inclinations in order to gain users' attention -- and who provide the foundation for its entire business model.

23 of 318 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So let's talk about it by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's talk about how a lot of Incels and white nationalists need some serious psychotherapy. That and stop being gullible morons.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  2. Wait... by Locke2005 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Jews are scheming to eliminate the white race? Aren't the Jews themselves... white? (My Jewish best friend is a Jerry Garcia look-alike who could easily pass for a redneck. He's even a bluegrass music fan!)

    --
    I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    1. Re:Wait... by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Informative

      The people that believe these kinds of things aren't the most logical/rational people.

    2. Re:Wait... by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 3, Informative

      Jews aren't a singular race, and haven't been ever.

      The problem is myopic view that European Jews are the only "real" Jews.

      Ignorance isn't an excuse any more, now you know.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    3. Re:Wait... by squiggleslash · · Score: 4, Informative

      If you're a Nazi, then no, they're not, because "white" in this case means more than the color of your skin. Also despite the hyperbolic name, "White genocide" apparently is the White Supremacists' term for interracial sex. The logic being that if all white people have sex exclusively with non-white people, then nobody will be white any more.

      Yes, it's really that stupid.

      Yes, quite a few liberals have been trapped by it, because they've said things like "Yeah, I'm in favor of white genocide!" and promptly been banned from Twitter because Twitter's abuse team isn't as "in" on White Supremacist lingo as lefties who keep being subjected to it and who subsequently look up what it means.

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    4. Re:Wait... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      According to the same site under "% of Jews who identify as" about 90% identify as white.

    5. Re:Wait... by HornWumpus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You can find crazy edge definitions many places.

      Many black christians consider abortion to be part of a 'black genocide'.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    6. Re:Wait... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You don't know what you're talking about.
      It also includes the push for mass immigration of non-whites so that whites become a minority in their own country.

    7. Re: Wait... by c6gunner · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You certainly can criticize Israel or Zionism without being an antisemite, but that doesn't change the fact that a significant portion of the criticism leveled against them is antisemtic in nature (with much of the rest being anti-western instead). People who can provide a rational and nuanced critique of either Israel or Zionism are far and few between.

    8. Re:Wait... by mishehu · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Go back some 40+ years and I think things would be different. My son has not experienced the levels of antisemitism that I did even in elementary school as a child. Also, we're basically forced to self-identify as "White/Caucasian", "Black/African", "Asian", "Pacific Islander", or, if we're lucky either "Human" or "Other". Technically Jewish people descend from Abraham of Ur, which makes us technically an Asian people. But "Asian" seems to pretty much apply to "people whose eyefolds have a slanted orientation" only. So what choice are we to make when we're basically forced to?

    9. Re:Wait... by Aighearach · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Do you mean the original Native Americans, or the Middle-Beringian invaders who displaced them?

  3. Re:So let's talk about it by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Funny

    Let's talk about how a lot of Incels and white nationalists need some serious psychotherapy.

    Psychotherapy has a poor track record, The evidence that it is effective is ambiguous. It is least likely to work when the underlying social issues go unaddressed. The incels still aren't getting laid. The WNs still have to see brown people.

    We are all nerds here, so we should be looking for technical solutions. For the incels, a good solution would be more realistic sexbots. For the WNs, we could make AR goggles that make everyone they see look white.

  4. Facebook has consistently proven by bblb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Facebook has proven time and time again that they will allow anything that targets whites, law enforcement, or conservatives and only have an interest in blocking "hate speech" if it's targeted at minorities or the left. This is hardly even newsworthy at this point, it's just their platform.

  5. It's Okay To Be White by alternative_right · · Score: 4, Insightful

    (Note to doubters: the people during the fall of Rome couldn't see it, either.)

    1. Re:It's Okay To Be White by Livius · · Score: 3, Insightful

      the people during the fall of Rome couldn't see it, either.

      In fact lots of them saw it. It didn't help, though.

  6. Re: So let's talk about it by c6gunner · · Score: 5, Informative

    You'd think pale skin would be a much bigger draw in the dating market, wouldn't you?

    It is. OK cupid has done a bunch of studies on this over the years. Whites consistently come out on top, and blacks consistently scrape the bottom, with black women scoring even worse than black men. Asian men also get screwed over, while Asian women do quite well.

    https://theblog.okcupid.com/ra...

    Of course the offline dating market may not be quite the same as the online one ... feel free to conduct your own study and test that hypothesis.

  7. Re: I dunno by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There are a lot of working class white men who are heroically working long hours for very low pay in many cases under management that treats them like crap - in a desperate, but mostly unsuccessful attempt, to provide comfortable secure lives for their wives and children.

    Myself, I don't think it's wrong for working class men to want to provide decent lives for their families - or even for them to be angry when, despite their best heroic efforts, they are unable to do so. It is, in my opinion, shameful that in a technologically advanced country like the USA it's not possible for most people to work an honest 9-5 and support their families simply but comfortably.

    But what is wrong is to blame Jews, or immigrants or foreigners. The rising inequality that is squeezing working-class white men and their wives and children so hard is fundamentally caused by policies championed by billionaires like Donald Trump and the Republican Party generally.

    TL;DR Working-class white men should be angry but they should be angry at billionaires like Trump rather than Jews, or foreigners or immigrants.

  8. Re:So let's talk about it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The inherent bigoted hypocrisy in modern social justice.

    Here's a few suggestions:
    1. abolish affirmative action
    2. stop measuring success of equal opportunity via equal outcome.
    3. drop the racist and sexist propaganda pushed by major institutions. It's raising whole generations of adult children who are incapable of reason.
    4. revamp education so that it focuses on enlightenment values instead of ideological conformity.
    5. strongly enforce borders while allowing those with something to offer the country a chance at citizenship. Time to create an inverse brain drain.

  9. Re:So let's talk about it by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, guys like Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh are making pretty good coin off of these groups. That's the amusing part, they don't even really see how they're being played by people who are basically entertainers. Breitbart falls under this umbrella now, as does Fox News.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  10. Re:So let's talk about it by epyT-R · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Lets talk about how a lot of insecure/jealous lamers want their betters to pay for their sloth-driven indigence. Their utterly massive insecurity complex perfectly explains their pathological need to celebrate this mental illness as 'diversity', often to the point where they act no differently than the neo-nazis they claim to fight.

  11. But by Greyfox · · Score: 3, Funny

    Should OBAMACARE buy SEX ROBOTS for INCELS? Your calls, after this!

    --

    I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?

  12. Re:Ahah, another nazi whines like a bitch : c6gumm by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There are a ton of Nazis running around. Except they dress in black, wear masks/bandanas over their faces, use violence to push their goals, claim sole right to dictate who gets to do what (usually based solely on race and gender), and call themselves, quaintly enough, "Anti Fascists".

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  13. Why Rome Fell by alternative_right · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Rome fell for the same reason that Athens fell: it lost its ability to coordinate itself. Diversity was both a symptom and a factor in that decline. As Plato pointed out, unstable republics import foreigners in order to have allies for their tyrants, and this accelerates instability to crash.

    Tell me all about the diverse republics in history that have done well by themselves and not crashed shortly after diversity was introduced. Yes, it takes them many centuries to reach The Bitter End, but in the meantime, they become abusive and dystopian places. Is that the future you want?