adtargeting
Latest
Oculus is rolling out its expanded social VR features
Along with Quest hand tracking, one of Facebook's big announcements at Oculus Connect 6 in September was a batch of social VR features. You'll get to try them over the coming days, as Oculus is starting to roll them out.
Facebook will be liable for future Cambridge Analytica-style scandals
Facebook is updating its terms and conditions after agreeing several changes with the EU. It will have to clearly explain to users they can access the social network for free because it uses targeted ads that rely on user data. Facebook will also have to disclose what revenues it generates through the use of such data.
US government charges Facebook with housing discrimination
The Department of Housing and Urban Development has charged Facebook with violating the Fair Housing Act. It says the company encouraged, enabled and caused housing discrimination through ad targeting. The charge follows a complaint the department filed against Facebook in August.
Facebook allowed advertisers to target users interested in Nazism
Facebook still has some work to do if it wants to eliminate racist criteria from its ad targeting. The company has pulled numerous audience groupings from its ad plaform after the LA Times discovered that advertisers could target ads for people interested in racist leaders and groups, including Nazi leader slike Joseph Goebbels and a neo-Nazi punk band. These potentially reached hundreds of thousands of users. Company spokesman Joe Osborne said these ad categories were rarely used and typically focused on historical material, but he also acknowledged that the company should have spotted them sooner and could do better.
Facebook referred to EU regulator over ad targeting methods
Facebook is about to face more scrutiny over its ad targeting methods. Just days after fining Facebook over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the UK's Information Commissioner's Office has referred the social network to the Irish Data Protection Commission, the European Union's main body for investigating Facebook under GDPR rules. The ICO has "ongoing concerns" about Facebook's systems for ad targeting, such as how it tracks "browsing habits, interactions and behavior" across the internet.
ACLU: Facebook allowed gender-discriminating job ads
The ACLU has filed a complaint against Facebook with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for what it says is unlawful gender-based targeting of job ads. The organization filed the charges on behalf of three women, the Communications Workers of America and the women the CWA represents. Its charges allege that Facebook allowed employers to target their job ads toward men and it names 10 companies that it says took advantage of that feature.
Spotify may let free users skip as many ads as they want
Since last month, Australian Spotify users have been using the Active Media feature, which lets them skip as many ads as they wish, whenever they like, even without a paid subscription or illicit apps that offer pirated versions of Premium. But everyone else on the free tier may not be left out of the unlimited ad-skipping party -- Spotify aims to offer the feature to users everywhere eventually.
A look at the ad-targeting tools AggregateIQ left exposed online
Throughout discussions about Cambridge Analytica, parent company Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL) and how they came to obtain information on some 87 million Facebook users, you've probably also heard the name AggregateIQ. The Canada-based data firm has now been connected to Cambridge Analytica operations as well as US election campaigns and the Brexit referendum. Now, cybersecurity firm UpGuard has discovered a large code repository that AggregateIQ left exposed online, and through that we're getting a better look at the company, what it does and how it does it.
