Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Continued To Identify Users Who Are Interested in Nazis -- and Then Used the Info To Let Advertisers Target Them, Investigation Finds (latimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Facebook makes money by charging advertisers to reach just the right audience for their message -- even when that audience is made up of people interested in the perpetrators of the Holocaust or explicitly neo-Nazi music. Despite promises of greater oversight following past advertising scandals, a Times review shows that Facebook has continued to allow advertisers to target hundreds of thousands of users the social media firm believes are curious about topics such as "Joseph Goebbels," "Josef Mengele," "Heinrich Himmler," the neo-nazi punk band Skrewdriver and Benito Mussolini's long-defunct National Fascist Party.
Experts say that this practice runs counter to the company's stated principles and can help fuel radicalization online. "What you're describing, where a clear hateful idea or narrative can be amplified to reach more people, is exactly what they said they don't want to do and what they need to be held accountable for," said Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League's center on extremism. After being contacted by The Times, Facebook said that it would remove many of the audience groupings from its ad platform.
Experts say that this practice runs counter to the company's stated principles and can help fuel radicalization online. "What you're describing, where a clear hateful idea or narrative can be amplified to reach more people, is exactly what they said they don't want to do and what they need to be held accountable for," said Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League's center on extremism. After being contacted by The Times, Facebook said that it would remove many of the audience groupings from its ad platform.
I support freedom of speech, even for scum like this.
a clear hateful idea or narrative can be amplified to reach more people, is exactly what they said they don't want to do
Who determines what a "clear hateful idea" is? Oh, I see what they did there.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
If you send them enough "Herbal viagra" and "discount pharmacy" ads, the problem will likely self correct.
First law of people: People are generally stupid.
I'm gonna be the first to Godwin this threa... oh crap.
#DeleteChrome
Sometimes articles make it seem like Facebook or someone else went *out of their way* to advertise Nazi stuff to people. That's most probably not the case. They probably made some algorithm do something like. "if X is interested in Y, then send some Z their way." Sometimes that might mean Nazi stuff. Then this happens and people say, "see! FACEBOOK IS SUPPORTING NAZIS." Sorry folks, but sometimes software robotic automatons are not sensitive to everyone's predilections. The simple software robots we are using at this point do not make moral judgements (unless told to) and every possible situation that might crop up that is negative like this one, cannot, I repeat, cannot be accounted for. There's going to be some roadkill if you drive a bunch of cars down the road, and there's going to be some poorly chosen details if you let the amoral algorithmic robots choose for you. That's the breaks. We should be educating the masses that this will happen, but that we will adjust as we can to avoid these kinds of things in the future.
one time I read about leprosy.... and it's ridiculous to then assume I'm now pro-leprosy; silly example, but exactly the same thing happens on a hot-button topic like this
ingesting information on any topic does not necessarily mean advocating or endorsing it; if one is 'curious' or 'interested' in a topic -- including valid historical figures and events, it is disingenuous to then be portrayed as being 'for' it
keep in mind FB is not a government entity but a profit-oriented business; any and all of its power was handed to it voluntarily by those who feel okay with trading their privacy for whatever FB offers in return; also keep in mind that tolerance of differing viewpoints is a keystone of democracy... removing alternative viewpoints is tyranny and will have a much deeper negative impact than a generally unpopular topic running its natural course
expecting government to handle social problems only leads to more government; more of that can certainly be worse than letting social issues play out in society; government-mandated solutions should be scarce since they come with their own set of intractable problems some of which are worse than what they are 'solving'
I don't see anyone in the OP advocating gov't intervention, so perhaps I ramble a bit here; on the other hand, if this is an attempt to educate the general public about FB's practices so the public can make better informed decisions, then hell yes, let's hear it
it comes down to personal responsibility for yourself and children; make a stand and make it work... too many whiners think "someone should do something" but never themselves; "I want my FB but somebody needs to make it safe for me" is about as disgustingly weak-minded as it gets; it's unreasonable to expect gov't to solve all of life's problems and honestly, I wouldn't want it to
my life IS about my choices; if somebody else is making choices for me, then it's not really my life
That makes no sense. How does it become a monopoly issue if you're able to replace the service with a low investment?
That was Microsoft's argument and they lost. A switch may be easy but when all the incentives say don't make the switch you still have a monopoly. Apple did not nullify Microsoft's monopoly. Google Plus did not nullify Facebook's monopoly. Basically the ease of switching is one thing, the cost of switching is something else entirely.
... "scum" remark wasn't targeted at WW2 academics ...
That's a rather poor description of those attempting to learn and understand history. You don't need to be a university professor conducting research; a young school kid trying to understand history, maybe understand the war their great-grandfather fought in, is acting just as honorably at the university researcher. The history of these terrible events and these terrible people is not some off limits thing that only certain accredited people should be allowed to see. To the contrary, the public at large needs to understand what happened, how it happened, so that it is less likely to happen again.
So, like anyone else on Facebook, their interests are being noted and sold off to advertisers. So what exactly is the problem here? Should fans of Nazi memorabilia be protected from being targeted by advertisers when everyone else isn't?
You are welcome on my lawn.