Google, Facebook, And Twitter Show Hypocrisy Via Racist And Offensive Ad Options

At this point, it’s clear that many of the biggest tech companies are thriving on ad revenue. This means that firms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter would be willing to cross a few lines to make sure that their bottom line remains green. Apparently, this includes allowing racists and anti-Semites to post ads on their respective platforms

The advertising woes besieging some the biggest online firms in Silicon Valley started when ProPublica published a report last week detailing how Facebook apparently allows racists to run hateful ads. It would seem that these racists could use such phrases as “Jew hater” or “How to burn jews” to cater to users on the platform.

Since then, several other reports have found that Google was guilty of the same thing. An investigation by BuzzFeed News found that the search engine giant was running ads to racists who might be typing such delightful phrases as "black people ruin neighborhoods” on Google’s search box.

Adding to the flames is apparently the fact that Google suggests more offensive phrases to run alongside other offensive ad keywords. For example, if the prospective ad buyer typed in "Why do Jews ruin everything," the search engine would suggest other keywords as "the evil jew" or "jewish control of banks."

Naturally, being labeled as a “racism-propagating platform” is not exactly at the top of a tech giant’s list of goals, especially with the recent public division in the US. Unfortunately, things only got worse when The Daily Beast discovered that Twitter was also guilty of adding to the flames of hate.

Although the micro-blogging company fixed the issue that it called a bug, it would seem that people using the “N-Word” as well as other offensive terms could use those words to advertise to exactly the kind of crowd that would use such phrases. Even worse is the fact that Twitter is the platform where the most hatred, bigotry, and racism is apparently at its most concentrated.

For example, the “N-Word” is reportedly able to attract up to 14.5 million of Twitter’s users. Meanwhile, the word “Nazi” could reel in over 18.6 million. These developments reflect a serious oversight on the part of these companies, which is largely considered responsible for putting Donald Trump in the White House, the most prominent and controversial figure on Twitter.