Facebook Allowed Advertisers To Target Users Interested in 'White Genocide'

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.

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