Thursday 11 July 2013

Facebook on the defensive after brands withdraw advertising

Facebook's director of policy has defended the social network following American Express, British Airways, Dove, Sky, Easyjet, and Ocado all withdrawing advertising from the site. 

The Everyday Sexism Project's campaign via the hashtag "#FBrape" highlighted how major brands were being advertised alongside "violent, graphic or sexual" offensive user-generated content that Facebook had supposedly sanctioned or moderated.
"Our interpretation of Article 10 [of the European Convention of Human Rights] is that people should be free to be pretty offensive online – there should be a broad range of offensive content that one can publish within the law," said Richard Allan, Facebook's EMEA director of policy.


"The way that Facebook advertising works is the adverts are directed to you – they are not directed to the content of a Facebook page.
"The irony is if you are a regular target group individual you will see ads for mainstream UK brands [and] if you now go and look for a page that has got offensive content on the ads follow you.

"We don’t think it has been happening through the normal usage of Facebook but clearly it is technically possible for it to happen."



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