Facebook scraps ad targeting based on politics, race and other 'sensitive' topics – NPR

Facebook will no longer let advertisers target people with ads based on how interested the social network thinks they are in topics like politics, religion, or race. Jenny Kane/AP hide caption toggle caption Jenny Kane/AP Facebook will no longer let advertisers target people with ads based on how interested the social network thinks they are in topics like politics, religion, or race. Jenny Kane/AP The parent company of Facebook will no longer let advertisers target people based on how interested the social network thinks they are in “sensitive” topics including health, race and ethnicity, political affiliation, religion and sexual orientation. Meta, which makes most of its $86 billion in annual sales from advertising, said it’s making the “difficult decision” in an effort to stop advertisers from using ad targeting to discriminate against or otherwise harm users. “We’ve heard concerns from experts that targeting options like these could be used in ways that lead to negative experiences for people in underrepresented groups,” Meta official Graham Mudd wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. To be clear, the targeting options are not based on a user’s demographics or personal attributes, but on whether they have interacted with content on Facebook that is…
Read More