Facebook, After ‘Fail’ Over Ads Targeting Racists, Makes Changes<br />“The fact that hateful terms were even offered as options was totally inappropriate and a fail on our part.”<br />Ms. Sandberg said the company “never intended or anticipated this functionality being used this way — and that is on us.”<br />But the company is facing a new wave of scrutiny over how those tools can be misused, particularly after it disclosed this month<br />that fake accounts based in Russia had purchased more than $100,000 worth of ads on divisive issues in the run-up to the presidential election.<br />Ms. Sandberg, who was directly addressing the social network’s recent advertising issues for the first time, also said the company would do more to ensure<br />that offensive content — including that which attacks people for their race or religion — could not be used to target ads.<br />Last fall, ProPublica reported that advertisers could use those tools to exclude certain races — or what the social network called “ethnic affinities” — from housing<br />and employment ads, a potential violation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
