Facebook let advertisers target 'Jew-haters'

Move along. There is no story here.

I fail to see how this is even a story?

Before I explain, let me say first. All hate, of race, religion, colour or creed is wrong wrong wrong!

But this story isn't really about this.

Facebook allows you to put any free text in your job title. Some idiots put Jew Hater in there. Okay, so maybe we can blame facebook for not banning people from entering that term. But its a strange arms race to police free text fields. We may soon get outraged stories about a Speech Therapist who was banned form facebook because the job title contained the word "rapist".

The second thing that happened was that you can create an ad that targets people with a certain job title. So they put in the word Jew Hater as a job title and got some hits. Okay. The story is maybe that some idiotic haters publish their hate on facebook under the entry Job Title.

Or is the story that facebook should have had better mechanisms in place to filter out people trying to target ads that contain blacklisted words? Yes they probably should. And when they find out about it they try to fix it.

But turning this into a racism story is absurd. How's about we do an outraged article about facebook allowing us to advertise DIY brewing kits to people who have identified themselves as "recovering alcoholics", because I bet that would be possible too.

It was just an example

They could have picked any group that people hate. But having found one that targeted thousands of people they used that as an example, set up a small targeted Facebook post and wrote about it.

A thorough research project would have compared the number of people who self-identify as haters of someone. But to prove there is a problem with Facebook, you just need one example.

So the only reason to object to the choice of example is when the objector also hates that group.

As for search terms in Facebook employer fields, take a look at the number of people who type search queries in to the Google Android App Facebook page. There is even a video singing about those search terms.

WTF - "Facebook lets advertisers target people based on how they identify"

And some facebook users, identify themselves with these terms.

Bemused as to how this is facebook's fault.

Already used for political ends, no?

Didnt Brexit and US presidential elections show how FB was used to target voters' racism -

"Facebook was the key to the entire campaign, Wigmore (Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU’s communications director) explained. A Facebook ‘like’, he said, was their most “potent weapon”. “Because using artificial intelligence, as we did, tells you all sorts of things about that individual and how to convince them with what sort of advert. And you knew there would also be other people in their network who liked what they liked, so you could spread. And then you follow them. The computer never stops learning and it never stops monitoring.”"

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy

Merely targeting keywords in user profiles is simple, the articles above suggest more sophisticated targeting. Facebook are themselves busy spinning their 'AI' capabilities to all kinds of clients.

Might it've been 'Dew Haters'?

I don't know about you, but I get flipping livid when my trouser bottoms get soaked when walking though long grass early in the morning.

Bah!

All that development money and not a spare dollar for a RegEx?

^S[Aa][Dd]\.$