Meta Scapes Facebook Ads Targeting Based On ‘Sensitive’ Topics

The parent company of Facebook, aka Meta, has announced that starting January 1st of 2022, Facebook will no longer let advertisers target people based on how interested the social network thinks they are in “sensitive” topics. These “sensitive” topics include health, race and ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, and sexual orientation. Meta makes roughly most of its $86 billion in annual sales from advertising, and they said that this was a difficult decision to make. According to Meta, this blocking is in an effort to stop advertisers from using ad targeting to discriminate against or otherwise harm users.

In a recent statement, Meta official Graham Mudd wrote; “We’ve heard concerns from experts that targeting options like these could be used in ways that lead to negative experiences for people in underrepresented groups.”

Source: NPR