Facebook Lets Advertisers Exclude Users by Race   ◆

ProPublica:

The ubiquitous social network not only allows advertisers to target users by their interests or background, it also gives advertisers the ability to exclude specific groups it calls “Ethnic Affinities.”

And

Facebook assigns members an “Ethnic Affinity” based on pages and posts they have liked or engaged with on Facebook.

I should be surprised by this, but I’m not. This is what happens when your leadership team is missing the diversity of voices to say “wait a minute….”

What’s worse is that while you can exclude Black, Asian and Latinx users, you can’t exclude White users.

Worse still is that users are mapped to an affinity based on their likes. How are they mapping any given “like” to “Black” or “Asian”? Opportunities to stereotype abound.