Politics, health and religion will be excluded from Facebook ad targeting

Published on : 11/10/2021 – 01:28

Facebook and Instagram users will soon no longer be able to be targeted by ads based on their interest in certain sensitive topics, such as sexual orientation and political affiliation, a major change from the online advertising giant.

“We want to better meet the changing expectations of people on the methods of advertisers,” Graham Mudd, vice president of advertising for the California group, said on Tuesday.

Formerly Facebook but recently renamed Meta, the parent company of the family of social applications is going through a major reputation crisis linked to the revelations of a whistleblower, who accuses it of putting its profits before its users. The company had $ 84 billion in revenue in 2020, mostly through advertising revenue.

Advertisers love the ability to target consumers very finely and at a very large scale. They can choose from thousands of interest categories, which users are placed into based on the pages they viewed or the ads they clicked on.

From January 19, thousands of categories will be removed, including those relating to sexual orientation (“gay marriage”, “LGBT culture”), health problems (“chemotherapy”, “world diabetes day”), religious practices (“Catholic Church”, “Jewish holidays”), political affiliations, ethnicity, etc.

Wrong use

The idea is to prevent organizations from misusing these categories, such as encouraging people to do wrong or dangerous things because they are gay, Muslim or have cancer, for example.

Last January, the Tech Transparency Project site denounced ads for gun cases or bulletproof vests targeting members of far-right groups on Facebook before the riots in Washington.

US housing authorities also filed lawsuits in 2019 against Facebook, accused of allowing real estate ads that “exclude people of color, families with children, women and people with disabilities.”

In the statement, Graham Mudd said the decision, “difficult to make”, is based on feedback from civil rights experts and lawmakers. “We know that it can affect certain companies and organizations”, recognizes the vice-president. They can use other tools, such as targeting people who have interacted directly with their brand or geolocation, for example.

The platform has already taken steps to give users themselves more control over what type of ads they want to see, or less see, and plans to add categories early next year, such as gambling. or diets.

With AFP