Facebook defends advertising 'principles' after Russia, discrimination

Jessica Guynn | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Facebook will soon show you If you fell For any Russia-linked pages Facebook said it will launch a portal allowing users to see which pages or accounts linked to Russia they interacted with. Video provided by Newsy

SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook is attempting to reassure the public about its advertising business after unsuspecting users in the United States were targeted by fake Russian accounts and investigations by a media outlet showed that the company's automated, self-service ad system could be used to discriminate against users.

Public trust in ads on Facebook is crucial for the giant social network, which makes most of its money from showing messages from marketers to its more than 2 billion users.

"Our goal is to show ads that are as relevant and useful as the other content you see," Rob Goldman, Facebook's vice president of ad products wrote in a blog post about the company's "principles."

He reminded users that Facebook does not sell their personal information and that they can control which ads they see. Facebook is building a feature that will let users visit any Facebook page and see the ads that an advertiser is running, whether or not those ads were targeted to those users, he said. And Facebook is working to remove content that violates its policies.

"We don’t want advertising to be used for hate or discrimination, and our policies reflect that," Goldman wrote.

More: Russia exploited race divisions on Facebook. More black staffers, diversity could have have helped.

More: Facebook expands scope of Russian influence on Americans for second time

More: Russians used Facebook the way other advertisers do: By tapping into its data-mining machine

More: See the fake Facebook ads Russians ran on Clinton, guns, race, Christianity

Facebook created a multibillion-dollar digital advertising business by allowing marketers to pinpoint exactly whom they want to reach.

The giant social network is constantly hoovering information from what you post there: your age, gender, education and income level, job title, relationship status, hobbies, political leanings, what TV shows and movies you like, what kind of car you drive.

It also tracks which pages you like and the ads you click on, the phone you use and your Internet connection as well as the sites you browse on the Web. It buys information from data brokers that gather detailed information from public records and previous purchases and purchasing behavior, among other things, ranging from the value of your home to whether you carry a balance on your credit card.

When you combine that information with what Facebook already knows about you, it's arguably the most complete consumer snapshot on earth.

The effectiveness of that advertising machine allowed a Kremlin-linked Russian organization to purchase more than $100,000 of ads intended to sow discord during and after the 2016 presidential election. That has put Facebook on the defensive — and it's a wake-up call for Facebook users, who for years have allowed the quiet culling of their personal data in exchange for the free service without much thought to what happens to that data, let alone whether a foreign power could exploit it to stoke outrage over polarizing issues from gay rights to gun rights.

Last week ProPublica, following up on an investigation from 2016, reported that advertisers placing housing ads on Facebook could still exclude users by race in violation of federal law.

This summer ProPublica found that advertisers could also target "jew haters" with ads on Facebook. And the privacy of young people was called into question when in May The Australian discovered that Facebook shared the emotional states of teens in Australia and New Zealand with an advertiser.

Facebook said last week that it would roll out an online tool that will show you if you liked or followed fake Russian accounts spreading disinformation during the 2016 presidential election on Facebook or Instagram.

But the tool won't be able to tell you if you are one of the people who saw this content because friends shared it in your news feed. And it will not show you the content posted by the accounts or pages, only a list of the content.

Facebook has left it up to Congress to release the ads bought by the Internet Research Agency. Nearly 150 million Facebook and Instagram users may have seen paid ads and organic posts distributed by the Kremlin-linked organization in St. Petersburg.