Facebook has announced their plans to eliminate discrimination by removing over 5000 advanced ad options. This comes after an investigation in 2016 showed that the advanced targeting options could be used to exclude people based on their ethnicity or religion. To quote Facebook “We’re committed to protecting people from discriminatory advertising on our platforms.”
The way the advanced options worked was to give businesses the option to pick the ideal target market based on certain political views, religious beliefs and ethnicity. In 2016 Cambridge Analytica used these specific targeting options to zoom in on a certain group of people with the political views they wanted in order to try and sway the U.S Presidential Elections.
Now that Facebook has decided to remove these discriminatory targeting options, they have also added a new advertiser certification process. This is a certificate that forces business owners to use the Facebook in a non-discriminating way. “We want to help educate advertisers about their obligations under out policies.” The certification is going to be expanded to all regions over time and will be another way they can help eradicate discrimination and misuse on their platform.
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