Facebook Removes “Pseudoscience” as Category for Advertisers

Facebook has recently removed the “pseudoscience” category for advertisers. It has also “paused the availability of some other interest categories while it evaluates its list,” reported Fox Business. A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed this in an email. It follows Reuters’s discovery that “conspiracy theory” was not an ad-targeting option anymore.

According to the spokeswoman, the company removed the pseudoscience category from its “detailed targeting” list. This is after The Markup pointed out that it could advertise a post targeting people interested in pseudoscience.

The news site also pointed out that Facebook was allowing such ads even after it said it would control COVID-19 misinformation.

According to Avaaz, a sample of 104 coronavirus-related pieces of misinformation content on Facebook reached more than 117 million estimated views. It appears that the “pseudoscience” category has been available for several years. Data from ProPublica in 2016 shows that Facebook assigned “pseudoscience” to users at that time.

“We will continue to review our interest categories,” said the Facebook spokeswoman.

Last week, Facebook started the initiative of removing misinformation from the platform.

According to The Verge, Zuckerberg said that the company plans to add a “Get The Facts” section with “articles written by independent fact-checking partners debunking misinformation about the coronavirus.” It would also connect people who had “previously engaged with harmful misinformation about COVID-19” to accurate information.

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