Facebook Ads Suggest Slurs

In a recent update to the Facebook ad system, Facebook started suggesting other key terms that were related to the ones you entered. This was designed to help you get more bang for you buck when setting up ads. However, this seems to be back firing on them. The ads are suggesting racial and gay slurs.

So if you targeted “gay” they will also suggested faggot and sissy. Oh yes, seriously. Now Facebook made a very quick fix on this issue. But if you target “faggot” you get suggestions like sissy and cunt. But the terms are now being categorized as slang and only come up when you are targeting other slang terms.

Interestingly enough if you tag “gay” or “lesbian” you get a suggestion for the tag “white people”. Not a racial slur, but an interesting social commentary on the part of Facebook ads.

The Facebook prejudice does not stop here. You might be able to use the tag “gay” but if you say gay in your ad, it will very likely not be approved. So target your ad, jut don’t talk about it.