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FacebookInc said on Thursday it was temporarily disabling the ability of advertisers to target based on people's self-reported education and job information after a report that thosefeatures allowed targeting based on anti-semitic topics.
ProPublica, a non-profit news organization based in New York, reported hours earlier that Facebook's self-service ad-buying platform had allowed marketers to targetadsat people who, on theirFacebookprofile, had listed phrases such as "Jew hater" as their field of study or work.
Some 2,300 people had expressed interest in the topics "Jew hater," "how to burn Jews" and "History of 'why Jews ruin the world',” according to ProPublica's investigation.
Facebook, the world's largest social network, confirmed the ProPublica investigation.
Once people put those phrases on theirFacebookprofiles, the anti-Semitic topics automatically migrated onto the company's advertising platform, as if they were education or job data that would be useful to marketers,Facebooksaid.
"We are removing these self-reported targeting fields until we have the right processes in place to help prevent this issue,"Facebooksaid in a statement late on Thursday.
"We wantFacebookto be a safe place for people and businesses, and we'll continue to do everything we can to keep hate offFacebook," it said.
Facebookinitially responded to the ProPublica report by removing the topics in question from its ad system. However other news reports, including from Slate magazine, then discovered that hateful topics were more widespread in the ad system's targeting capabilities.
AsFacebookhas given advertisers greater power to micro-target their messages using a self-service platform, the company has at times failed to ensure they comply with its terms and conditions.
Last year, ProPublica reported thatFacebookallowed advertisers to exclude users by race when running housing or otherads, despite a prohibition on suchadsunder the USFair Housing Act 1969.
Facebooksaid last week an operation likely based in Russia spent $100,000 on thousands of U.S.adspromoting social and political messages over a two-year period through May, fueling concerns about foreign meddling in USelections.
The company said it shut down 470 "inauthentic" accounts as part of an internal investigation into thoseads.
Facebookand rival Google, owned by Alphabet Inc, dominate the fast-growing market for online advertising, in part because theyletmarketers target theiradsbased on huge volumes of data.
Facebookreported $27.6 billion in 2016 revenue, the vast majority from advertising.
Ad campaigns that used the anti-Semitic categories onFacebookwere not widespread, the company said.
"Given that the number of people in these segments was incredibly low, an extremely small number of people were targeted in these campaigns,"Facebooksaid.
One changeFacebooksaid it was considering was adding more thorough reviews of targeting categories before they show up in the self-service platform.