Facebook has been doing a pretty good job all in all when it comes to helping the world deal with the coronavirus and a big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that the social media platform has actively tried to finds solutions to problems and has also really cracked down on misinformation on the site so that no one can share articles that are not verified and might spread false details among the populace about the pandemic that we are currently trying to get through.
However, a flaw in Facebook’s system might have caused a lot of damage even though Facebook upon learning about it fixed the problem immediately, as reported by TheMarkup. There is a list of keywords that can be used when posting ads on the platform, and these ads are meant for directed targeting of people that the ad needs to get to. It turns out that tens of millions of people on Facebook respond to ads that had pseudoscience tags, which meant that this turned into an entire ad category that was actually quite popular.
One can imagine how problematic something like this can end up being considering the political climate as well as the pandemic that we are currently attempting to get through. The ad category was removed as well as other categories that were in a similar vein. While Facebook was hoping that these categories might help prevent the spread of misinformation by targeting audiences that have a dislike for such words it could also be used in the opposite way which makes it a good thing that Facebook has removed these ad categories due to the reason that it’s always better to be safe rather than to end up being sorry due to a lapse in judgment at the end of the day.
Photo: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Read next: Facebook is Experimenting With Color Adaptive Profile Backgrounds
However, a flaw in Facebook’s system might have caused a lot of damage even though Facebook upon learning about it fixed the problem immediately, as reported by TheMarkup. There is a list of keywords that can be used when posting ads on the platform, and these ads are meant for directed targeting of people that the ad needs to get to. It turns out that tens of millions of people on Facebook respond to ads that had pseudoscience tags, which meant that this turned into an entire ad category that was actually quite popular.
One can imagine how problematic something like this can end up being considering the political climate as well as the pandemic that we are currently attempting to get through. The ad category was removed as well as other categories that were in a similar vein. While Facebook was hoping that these categories might help prevent the spread of misinformation by targeting audiences that have a dislike for such words it could also be used in the opposite way which makes it a good thing that Facebook has removed these ad categories due to the reason that it’s always better to be safe rather than to end up being sorry due to a lapse in judgment at the end of the day.
Photo: Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Read next: Facebook is Experimenting With Color Adaptive Profile Backgrounds
