An opinion piece advocating for renters’ rights posted by socialist magazine tribune wasn’t able to be promoted on Facebook because it didn’t comply with its discrimination policy.
The ad was blocked automatically by Meta’s discrimination policy which caused Ronan Burtenshaw the editor of Tribune to take to Twitter to call Meta out. The article talked about the rising costs of living and the rental crisis.
Burtenshaw wrote: “Here’s a good one: Facebook has prevented us from promoting our article on record rents today because it’s “discriminatory” against… landlords. We appealed as well: no dice. Big Tech censorship is off the wall.”
The Tweet then went viral and secured over 38k likes.
Here’s a good one: Facebook has prevented us from promoting our article on record rents today because it’s “discriminatory” against… landlords.
We appealed as well: no dice. Big Tech censorship is off the wall. pic.twitter.com/e9F4JIRYGC
— Ronan Burtenshaw (@ronanburtenshaw) April 4, 2022
According to The Guardian, A Facebook spokesperson told them, “The ad placed by the Tribune was rejected in error by our systems but is now active and will appear in the ad library shortly.
“While our review is largely automated, we rely on our teams to build and train these systems, and in some cases to manually review ads. Sometimes both machines and humans make mistakes and an ad may be rejected in error, but we endeavour to restore them as soon as possible.”
Meta then fixed the issue. Of course, while the error is frustrating it’s worth noting the discrimination policy has been designed to protect groups and people.
Meta is trying to make sure things that are promoted on the platform align with its policies.
