A new report is holding Facebook guilty of serving ads belonging to white supremacist groups.
The report has gone on to identify more than 100 Facebook pages and nearly 20 different groups on the app that have links to organizations backing up white supremacy across its platform.
The researchers of the study being carried out claim they had searched the app for hundreds of groups that came under the label of being hateful and dangerous. And according to them, more than one-third of such pages had support provided by Facebook in the form of ads. Common names included the likes of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The news comes to us despite Facebook constantly urging the world that it collects zero profit from such pages and spiteful content. However, seeing the presence of ads on the majority of these pages speaks otherwise as nearly 40% of the queries on the groups had ads popping up.
Around 24 white supremacist pages covered in the study had been autogenerated by the Meta-owned company. And by that, we mean to say that whenever there is a boost in interest linked to a particular topic, Facebook has the tendency of creating such pages automatically. And the same case appears to have occurred here.
But this is not the first time that we’re hearing about the app auto-generating such hateful pages. Another alarm was raised in the year 2020 after an analysis by the Tech Transparency Group proved the same evidence.
Interestingly, that’s when a spokesperson for the company stepped in and said over 200 pages known to be linked to white supremacy were banned by the platform. He also outlined that the company prefers to invest in ways to keep the app safe from such groups. This includes the likes of staff members, technology, and research funding to better its safety protocols.
The spokesperson carried out to reveal how it immediately solved so many issues where ads were seen to appear on such groups’ pages, whenever they’re searched for. They also claim to be working on fixing the issues linked to auto-generation as well.
Facebook brushed it off very casually with the promise of how so many experts from the outside world were working by the app’s side to solve the issue that they feel is definitely alarming, ridding the platform of all such hate content.
Well, let’s see what happens next because, in 2020, a thousand advertisers were seen boycotting the app for the same reason.
Read next: WhatsApp has come up with a new feature that will block screenshots for privacy reasons
The report has gone on to identify more than 100 Facebook pages and nearly 20 different groups on the app that have links to organizations backing up white supremacy across its platform.
The researchers of the study being carried out claim they had searched the app for hundreds of groups that came under the label of being hateful and dangerous. And according to them, more than one-third of such pages had support provided by Facebook in the form of ads. Common names included the likes of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The news comes to us despite Facebook constantly urging the world that it collects zero profit from such pages and spiteful content. However, seeing the presence of ads on the majority of these pages speaks otherwise as nearly 40% of the queries on the groups had ads popping up.
Around 24 white supremacist pages covered in the study had been autogenerated by the Meta-owned company. And by that, we mean to say that whenever there is a boost in interest linked to a particular topic, Facebook has the tendency of creating such pages automatically. And the same case appears to have occurred here.
But this is not the first time that we’re hearing about the app auto-generating such hateful pages. Another alarm was raised in the year 2020 after an analysis by the Tech Transparency Group proved the same evidence.
Interestingly, that’s when a spokesperson for the company stepped in and said over 200 pages known to be linked to white supremacy were banned by the platform. He also outlined that the company prefers to invest in ways to keep the app safe from such groups. This includes the likes of staff members, technology, and research funding to better its safety protocols.
The spokesperson carried out to reveal how it immediately solved so many issues where ads were seen to appear on such groups’ pages, whenever they’re searched for. They also claim to be working on fixing the issues linked to auto-generation as well.
Facebook brushed it off very casually with the promise of how so many experts from the outside world were working by the app’s side to solve the issue that they feel is definitely alarming, ridding the platform of all such hate content.
Well, let’s see what happens next because, in 2020, a thousand advertisers were seen boycotting the app for the same reason.
Read next: WhatsApp has come up with a new feature that will block screenshots for privacy reasons
