'Tale as Old as Time': Users Scoff Over Meta Announcement of Targeting Restrictions

Earlier in the week, Facebook's parent company, Meta announced that it will be limiting targeting options, thus barring advertisers from reaching out to users based on their religious beliefs, sexual orientation or race.

After a major rebrand from "Facebook" to "Meta" amid accusations of failing to tackle misinformation on its platform, Mark Zuckerberg's social media behemoth has recently announced its new move relating to advertising options.

However, these changes received a pretty chilly welcome from many netizens who decried Facebook's initiative to ban advertising which target religious views, sexual orientation or race as "meaningless".

According to the users, the core problem, as a result of which Facebook - now Meta - has received such a strong backlash recently, was not about the way it facilitated advertising, but rather about the amount of misinformation and harmful content it failed to tackle and protect its users from.

This policy does nothing to address the core problem with Facebook: their organic algorithm — not paid advertising — favors divisive, hateful content, a strategic choice by Facebook that hugely advantages the political right. https://t.co/twMlATFIpk

— Patrick Stevenson (@stevensonpj) November 9, 2021

[screaming into the void]

The problem with Facebook is ORGANIC misinformation and no ad targeting change will fix that.

— Evan Degnan (@edegnan) November 9, 2021

Tale as old as time. Instead of fixing the problem, Facebook implements meaningless political ad restrictions.

I can't say I look forward to them fucking this up and not letting me target fans of Barack Obama or Planned Parenthood, but easily targeting fans of Ben Shapiro. https://t.co/TF2dAv6xDg

— Dan Pino (@DanPino) November 9, 2021

For some users, the restriction of targeting appeared to be not enough, as they called for the additional limitation of targeting based on sex.

No more targeting based on race or sexual orientation but still OK to target based on sex bc targeting Women doesn’t raise “sensitive” issues. What the friggin hell?Women suffer far more harm from Facebook targeting than ALL other types of people combined. https://t.co/q4yGZABugb

— Wendy Murphy (@WMurphyLaw) November 10, 2021

Others, however, appeared to approve - jokingly - of Facebook's new targeting ways.

the facebook ad targeting is getting scary accurate pic.twitter.com/XzaSZJsRUs

— OaklandAlex (@OaklandAlexTV) November 10, 2021

When announcing the changes, Meta noted that the "interest targeting options we are removing are not based on people’s physical characteristics or personal attributes, but instead on things such as people’s interactions with content on our platform."

Although admitting that the move may "negatively affect some businesses and organisations", Meta said it remains committed to meeting "the needs of everyone we serve".