Revealed: Facebook enables ads to target users interested in 'vaccine controversies'
Source: The Guardian
Revealed: Facebook enables ads to target users interested in 'vaccine controversies'
Social media platforms under pressure by US congressman to crack down on anti-vaccine propaganda, citing Guardian investigations
Julia Carrie Wong
Fri 15 Feb 2019 18.59 GMT
Facebook enables advertisers to promote content to nearly 900,000 people interested in “vaccine controversies”, the Guardian has found.
Other groups of people that advertisers can pay to reach on Facebook include those interested in “Dr Tenpenny on Vaccines”, which refers to anti-vaccine activist Sherri Tenpenny, and “informed consent”, which is language that anti-vaccine propagandists have adopted to fight vaccination laws.
Facebook’s self-serve advertising platform allows users to pay to promote posts to finely tuned subsets of its 2.3 billion users, based on thousands of characteristics, including age, location, gender, occupation and interests. In some cases, users self-identify their interests, but in other cases, Facebook creates categories based on users’ online activity. In 2017, after a controversy involving antisemitic interest categories, Facebook vowed to build “new guardrails” on its targeting categories.
Facebook is already facing pressure to stop promoting anti-vaccine propaganda to users amid global concern over vaccine hesitancy and a measles outbreak in the Pacific north-west.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/feb/15/facebook-anti-vaccination-advertising-targeting-controversy