European Commission Gives Green Light to Facebook Ads Inciting Violence

Once again, Meta is being accused of inadequate measures to curb the dissemination of hate speech and violent content through Facebook ads. A recent report highlights eight specific ads that were approved despite blatantly violating the company’s policies on hate speech and violence, and were aimed at European audiences.

The report comes from watchdog Ekō, which is sharing its work to draw attention to the social network’s “substandard moderation practices” ahead of the Digital Services Act (DSA), which comes into force in Europe later this week. It details how the organization tried to buy 13 Facebook ads over the course of a few days in early August, all of which used AI-generated images and contained text that was clearly against the company’s rules.

Ekō pulled the ads before users saw them. The group asked that the exact wording of the ads be withheld, but offered descriptions of some of the most egregious examples. Approved ads included an ad set in France that “called for the execution of a prominent member of the European Parliament for his stance on immigration” and an ad targeted at German users that “called for synagogues to be burned to the ground to protect the white”. The Germans.” In Spain, Meta also approved ads claiming that the latest elections were stolen and that people should participate in violent protests to cancel them.

“This report was based on a very small sample of ads and is not representative of the number of daily ads around the world,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement. “Our ad review process has multiple layers of analysis and detection. , both before and after an ad is published. We are taking extensive action in response to DSA and will continue to invest significant resources in protecting elections and combating hate speech, violence and incitement.”

While there were a handful of ads that were stopped by Meta’s checks, Ekō says the ads were blocked because they were flagged as political, not because of their violent and hateful rhetoric. (The company requires political advertisers to go through an additional vetting process before they’re eligible to place ads.)

Ekō is using the report to argue for additional protections under the DSA, a sweeping law that requires tech platforms to limit certain types of targeted advertising and allow users to opt out of recommendation algorithms. (Several services, including Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, have recently made changes to comply with the latter provision.) It also requires platforms to identify and mitigate “systemic risks,” including those related to illegal and violent content.

– With a few clicks, we were able to prove how easy it is for bad actors to spread hate speech and disinformation, Ekō’s campaign manager Vicky Wyatt said in a statement. “With the EU elections approaching, European leaders must fully monitor DSA and finally crack down on these toxic companies.”