In a recent article, BuzzFeed News claims that Facebook employees believe that the company’s global ad machine puts profits over people by allowing hackers and scammers to buy ads aimed at ripping off Facebook users and manipulating people.
In a recent article titled “Facebook Gets Rich Off Of Ads That Rip Off Its Users,” BuzzFeed News claims that a number of Facebook employees have begun raising internal alarms at the company about a series of advertisements appearing in their news feeds. The ads, purchased by Musical.ly, now the Chinese-owned TikTok, reportedly featured teenage girls dancing in a provocative manner to music in short clips.
One employee was curious as to why he and many of his colleagues were seeing ads clearly aimed at young girls. The employee then delved into Facebook’s advertising system and discovered that the issue wasn’t a bug but was actually working as Facebook’s advertising system intended. Facebook’s algorithms had been optimizing the ads for the audience interacting with them the most, middle-aged men.
Complaints about the ads, which continued after Musical.ly was acquired by Chinese firm ByteDance and rebranded as TikTok, were ignored. TikTok has reportedly spent $1 billion on advertising in 2018 and was considered a valuable business partner by Facebook, one employee claimed. Another employee stated that a Facebook manager’s response to the ad concerns was to restrict access to data about the ads’ targeting.
One Facebook data scientist wrote on the company’s internal message board: “It’s so weird that I only hear my 8-year old nieces talk about TikTok, but then see these ads with voluptuous young ladies targeted to men over 35 years old. Are we indeed making sure Facebook is not creating a predator’s paradise?”
The ads continued on Facebook’s platform for a year and a half, despite being flagged by employee’s much earlier. A Facebook spokesperson disputed the timeline telling BuzzFeed News: “This isn’t accurate, we first learned about this is in 2019, not 2017.”
Multiple employees claim that Facebook turns a blind eye to many ads that place users at risk, whether it be sharing provocative images of young girls with middle-aged men or advertising scams to users. BuzzFeed News notes that Facebook contractors appear to ignore major red flags, writing:
Meanwhile, contractors on some teams have been told to ignore larger patterns of fraud and hacked accounts — unless they cost Facebook money. “When I can see an account has been hacked and I’m told to look the other way, it’s really shocking to me,” said a source with knowledge of ads enforcement.
Internal messages seen by BuzzFeed News show an Accenture manager who led a team of 45 ads analysts instructing contract workers to ignore hacked accounts and other violations as long as “Facebook gets paid” for ads through a valid payment method. Even if a hacker has taken over a person’s account, contractors were told to allow the hacker to place ads, as long the payment method for ads was valid.
“If they are spending their own money and not adding any foreign cards that don’t belong to them, then Facebook doesn’t experience any leakage,” the manager wrote in July of last year. Leakage refers to credit card chargebacks or other scenarios that result in Facebook having to refund the money.
Read the full report at BuzzFeed News here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com
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