Our yarmulkas are off to Julia Angwin, Madeleine Varner and Ariana Tobin, who rubbed Facebook’s nose in its own puddle of corporate cynicism. Writing for the website ProPublica, an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism “with moral force,” exposing abuses of power and betrayals of the public trust by government, business, and other institutions. On Thursday, these three journalists told the world how “Facebook Enabled Advertisers to Reach ‘Jew Haters.’”
The short of it is that Facebook enabled advertisers to direct pitches to the news feeds of some 2,300 people with an interest in endearing topics such as “Jew hater,” “How to burn Jews,” and “History of ‘why Jews ruin the world.’”
It was very easy to prove, and it cost only $30, which Angwin, Varner and Tobin paid the world’s largest social network to target groups with three “promoted posts” — in which a ProPublica post was displayed in their news feeds. Facebook approved all three ads in 15 minutes.
Last year, ProPublica was able to block an ad that we bought in Facebook’s housing categories from being shown to African-Americans, Hispanics and Asian-Americans. After ProPublica’s article appeared, Facebook built a system that it said would prevent such ads from being approved.
After the Charlottesville riots, Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg posted a heartfelt note saying, among other things, “The last few days have been hard to process. I know a lot of us have been asking where this hate comes from. As a Jew, it’s something I’ve wondered much of my life. It’s a disgrace that we still need to say that neo-Nazis and white supremacists are wrong – as if this is somehow not obvious. My thoughts are with the victims of hate around the world, and everyone who has the courage to stand up to it every day.”
Now, at last, Zuckerberg received an answer to his desperate question about where all this hate is coming from – we don’t know for sure where it come from, but we know whom it comes through – Mark Zuckerberg.