Facebook may profit from white supremacist groups

• Facebook shows ads when users search for ‘Ku Klux Klan’ or ‘American Defense Skinheads.
• 40% of white supremacist group queries had advertising.
• Facebook has been criticized for years for auto-generating Pages

Facebook makes money off of white supremacist groups by showing ads when people search for dangerous groups like “Ku Klux Klan,” even though this kind of content is banned on the site.

A report by the Tech Transparency Project showed that there are more than 80 white supremacist groups on Facebook. Some of these groups have been called “dangerous organizations” by Facebook itself.

When a test user searched for white supremacist organizations on Facebook, the results were often monetised with adverts, the non-profit reported. 40% of white supremacist group queries had advertising. “That’s a worrying discovery, considering allegations that the gunman who killed 10 people in a racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, researched a high-Black neighborhood,” the study said.

Despite years of warnings that Facebook’s algorithmic techniques steer users toward extremism, the network continues to auto-generate Pages for white supremacist organizations and direct visitors to extremist content. Facebook fails to divert visitors searching for hate phrases to websites encouraging tolerance, the research said. 37% of the 226 white supremacist organizations analyzed had a Facebook presence.

These groups have 119 Facebook Pages and 20 Groups. Facebook routinely monetized searches for white supremacist organizations like ‘American Defense Skinheads,’ according to a research.

Facebook monetized searches for “dangerous organizations” Searches for white supremacist organizations, including “Ku Klux Klan,” yielded ads for Black churches, sparking worries Facebook is emphasizing extremist goals. Facebook’s algorithmic recommendations pushed users to extremist or hateful content, the research claimed.

270 white nationalist groups are banned from Facebook, according to Meta. “We’ll keep working with outside experts and organizations to remove violent, bigoted, and terrorism-related content,” Facebook added. In 2020, 1,000 advertisers abandoned Facebook over hate speech and misinformation.

Also Read

Facebook adds a new chronologically ordered tab called Feeds

Today, Facebook announced a fairly significant update to its app. The main...