Facebook at Maximum Crisis, Will Not Run Political Targeted Ads

(Photo by AP)

[Asia Economy Reporter Yujin Cho] Facebook, facing its biggest crisis since its founding due to internal whistleblowing and antitrust regulations, has decided to stop targeted ads related to political issues.

According to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on the 9th (local time), Facebook's parent company Meta will eliminate customized targeted ads based on sensitive topics such as politics, race, religion, health, and sexual orientation starting January 19 next year.

This means it will no longer be possible to display ads differently according to an individual's political preferences or specify keywords for advertising, but political ads will not be completely banned.

Facebook explained the background of this measure through a blog post, stating, "We have learned that customized ads can be used in ways that lead to negative experiences for some users."

They also added that this measure is not expected to significantly threaten Facebook's revenue model.

WSJ noted that for Facebook, which earns most of its annual revenue of $86 billion (as of the end of last year) from online advertising ($84.2 billion), this decision was not easy, but it is expected to have little impact on the value of the Facebook platform.

Facebook has been criticized for its passive stance on political ads, which have been at the center of controversy. Many platform companies, including Facebook, have been criticized for generating negative social phenomena by earning money through personalized marketing.

In response, Google has stopped its search service that targets political ads based on user interests worldwide, and Twitter has banned political ads entirely.

Facebook faced significant backlash when it was revealed that in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the British political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica (CA) collected and used data from 87 million Facebook users for political advertising.

At that time, Facebook was criticized and internally whistleblown for not reporting CA's data collection to authorities, allegedly due to concerns over 'targeted ad revenue.'

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.