Report: Facebook Continues To Profit Off Ads Slandering LGBTQ Community

This summer, Facebook pledged to crack down on content that baselessly called the LGBTQ community or individuals “groomers.” However, despite this policy, the advocacy group Media Matters has discovered 134 ads on Facebook and Instagram containing the word. The report also revealed that these offensive ads have also received over 1 million impressions and netted the social media giant over $13,000 in revenue.

To make matters worse, 19 new ads have cropped up since Media Matters flagged the issue for Facebook last month. According to the advocacy group, this persistence signifies that the social media giant is prioritizing profit over its own users even as it puts out statements supporting them.

“Those are just empty words when we see them turn a blind eye to the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on their platform,” Media Matters deputy research director Kayla Gogarty told The Daily Dot. “It’s really just another instance of Meta putting profit and engagement over the safety of its users.”

While Facebook has reportedly removed 40 of these ads in the past month, that clearly isn’t enough to keep up with the scope of the problem. Even if the company isn’t intentionally profiting from this content, the fact remains that it is — and it needs to do a much more thorough job of removing it.




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