Facebook to add more human review to ad system: COO Sandberg

Reuters  |  SAN FRANCISCO 

By David Ingram

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Inc will add "more human review and oversight" to its ad-buying system, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said on Wednesday, responding to rising criticism that automated processes have allowed people to buy discriminatory ads.

Sandberg said in a post on her page the company would have more manual review of the targeting options it gives advertisers, a change that she said would strengthen the system after a report had allowed advertisers to market to self-described "Jew haters."

ProPublica, a non-profit organisation based in New York, reported last week that it was possible to buy ads targeted to people who, on their profiles, had listed anti-Semitic topics in their field of study or work.

Once people put those phrases on their profiles, the topics automatically migrated onto the company's platform, as if they were education or job data that would be useful to marketers.

temporarily disabled some targeting capabilities last week in response to the ProPublica investigation.

Sandberg, who is Jewish, said in her post: "The fact that hateful terms were even offered as options was totally inappropriate and a fail on our part."

should have discovered the unintended feature on its own, Sandberg added. The company would create a program to encourage people on to report potential abuses of its ads system directly to the company, she said.

U.S. lawmakers have separately criticized for allowing Russian operatives to buy U.S. political ads before and after the 2016 elections. Sandberg's post did not mention the alleged Russian ads.

(Reporting by David Ingram; Editing by Tom Brown)

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: Thu, September 21 2017. 04:38 IST