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Facebook allowed ads targeted at ‘Jew haters’
Facebook lets advertisers reach people based on various interests, but there’s one audience that raised eyebrows: “Jew haters.”
ProPublica discovered that the social media giant allowed advertisers to target nearly 2,300 people who expressed interest in “Jew haters,” “How to burn Jews,” or the “History of why Jews ruin the world.”
The nonprofit tested these anti-Semitic ad categories by buying ads totaling $30 to reach these audiences. Facebook, which is led by a Jewish CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, removed the categories this week after ProPublica contacted the company.
“There are times where content is surfaced on our platform that violates our standards,” Rob Leathern, Facebook’s product management director, said in a statement to SiliconBeat. “We know we have more work to do, so we’re also building new guardrails in our product and review processes to prevent other issues like this from happening in the future.”
This isn’t the first time the tech firm has faced criticism over the type of ads it runs.
Facebook revealed this month that fake accounts and pages that likely have ties to Russia spent $100,000 in divisive political ads before the U.S. presidential election.
Last year, the tech firm vowed to make changes after ProPublica discovered that it could buy housing ads that exclude users with AfricanAmerican, Asian-American and Hispanic ethnic affinities in the United States.
So how exactly did these
categories end up on Facebook in the first place?
Facebook’s ad tools automatically generated these categories based on their users’ online activities and what they share. ProPublica claimed that the categories were “created by an algorithm,” but a Facebook spokesperson said the categories were “self-reported based on how people filled out their profiles.”
Facebook said it’s considering limiting the number of fields available or adding more reviews of fields before they show up in ads creation.
— Queenie Wong
Graffiti-fighting drones coming to San Jose
San Jose has a new high-tech solution to its persistent graffiti problem.
Mayor Sam Liccardo on Wednesday announced a
graffiti-removing drone as the winner of the city’s “Unleash your Geek” contest. Entrepreneurs Christopher Farmer and Candace Marbury, a couple from downtown San Jose, demonstrated their prototype drone at the Hammer Theatre Center in San Jose. Dubbed GRAD — Graffiti Removed by Automatic Drone — the small drone buzzed around the stage, spraying white paint on a canvas to cover up graffiti that had been painted there.
GRAD was dreamed up in response to a challenge by San Jose leaders: find a solution to remove graffiti from hard-to-reach spots like overpasses, freeway signs, sound walls and railroad trestles. Those efforts can be difficult and costly — recent graffiti removal along Highway 101 required closing freeway lanes for three nights, deploying large cranes and dozens of workers, an effort that cost $60,000, according to the city.
So the city invited inventors to propose a solution, offering $20,000 in
prize money to four finalists, and an extra $5,000 and assistance in obtaining a patent to the winner.
On Wednesday, Liccardo congratulated Marbury and Farmer for coming up with a fix that works.
The couple is working on updating their prototype in collaboration with CalTrans, he said. And they’re already at work on a version 2.0, which will walk or crawl up the side of buildings to eradicate graffiti, KRON4 reports.
The drones should be buzzing around San Jose by summer 2018, according to KTVU.
— Marisa Kendall
Ex-Googlers slammed for ‘Bro-degas’
If two former Google employees succeed in their new enterprise, they’ll put mom-and-pop stores across the U.S. out of business.
For their efforts to disrupt the corner store market, Ashwath Rajan and Paul McDonald are now undergoing public excoriation.
The pair on Sept. 13 launched “Bodega,” named after what people on the East Coast call the local corner stores that sell foods, drinks and everyday items.
Described by Fast Company as “glorified vending machines,” the Bodega systems are essentially large cabinets stocked with goods that customers can access and pay for via a phone app and the systems’ computer vision capabilities.
Bodega has reportedly raised $2.5 million in funding.
Rajan and McDonald have been running beta tests of the concept at 30 spots in the Bay Area, including apartment lobbies, dorms, offices and gyms, the magazine reported. On launch day they were to open 50 locations on the West Coast, and they’re shooting for more than 1,000 across the nation by the end of 2018.
Beyond that? McDonald has big plans. “There will be 100,000 Bodegas spread out, with one always 100 feet away from you,” he
told the magazine, which referred to the business as “Bro-dega.”
However, many bodegas are mom-and-pop operations, and Rajan and McDonald are taking harsh flak over their move to outconvenience the convenience stores.
After tweeting out the Fast Company story with a dismissive profanity attached, New York magazine editor Jessica Roy followed up:
“My bodega owners are yemeni immigrants and the bodega not only affords them a life in new york but also allows them to send money back home,” Roy tweeted.
— Ethan Baron
Want to sue Equifax? Chatbot can help
Are you one of the up to 143 million Americans who had their personal info hacked in last week’s massive Equifax data breach?
If so, help might come from an unlikely place — a chatbot.
DoNotPay, the bot originally created to help people contest parking tickets, has been programmed to sue Equifax on behalf of people who had their data compromised in the breach.
Users who access the bot online will see a prompt that says “Automatically sue Equifax for $15,000.” If they click, they will be taken to a page that lists New York, California, and other states where they can file a claim.
The bot asks users questions and helps them fill out the PDF form to file a suit in small claims court, VentureBeat reported. There’s no need for a lawyer.
The bot was created by London native and Stanford University student Joshua Browder as a sort of robotic lawyer to help people navigate the legal system on their own. In January, NPR reported the bot helped people overturn more than 200,000 parking tickets in London, New York and Seattle.
— Marisa Kendall