Facebook nixes 'pseudoscience' ad-targeting category

After The Markup revealed that Facebook users were being targeted with bad ads for garbage products, Facebook has now agreed to remove pseudoscience as an ad targeting option for advertisers.

Yes, this was allowed during the coronavirus pandemic, until a news website shamed Facebook into eliminating it.

Pseudoscience was available until this week, The Markup reported, even as Facebook vowed to curb COVID-19 disinformation.

From The Markup:

But at the very same time, The Markup found, Facebook was allowing advertisers to profit from ads targeting people that the company believes are interested in pseudoscience. According to Facebooks ad portal, the pseudoscience interest category contained more than 78 million people.

This week, The Markup paid to advertise a post targeting people interested in pseudoscience, and the ad was approved by Facebook.

Using the same tool, The Markup boosted a post targeting people interested in pseudoscience on Instagram, the Facebook-owned platform that is incredibly popular with Americans under 30. The ad was approved in minutes.

We reached out to Facebook asking about the targeting category on Monday morning. After asking for multiple extensions to formulate a response, company spokesperson Devon Kearns emailed The Markup on Wednesday evening to say that Facebook had eliminated the pseudoscience interest category.

Read the rest:Want to Find a Misinformed Public? Facebooks Already Done It[themarkup.org

More at Reuters. Read the rest