Group says gun ads on Facebook violate the company’s policies
Facebook has allowed ads for guns and gun accessories to run on its platform in violation of its own rules, according to a report released Wednesday from the Tech Transparency Project (TTP).
The platform’s parent company Meta prohibits advertisements promoting the use or sale of weapons and weapon accessories in its own ad policies, but the TTP investigation found that Meta “regularly approves” such ads, sounding alarms about the company’s review system for what goes up on its sites.
The investigation reportedly uncovered 173 examples of gun-related ads that were approved to run on Facebook and Instagram Aug. 15-29 alone.
The material advertised the guns themselves, as well as rifle scopes and mounted lights attachments and accessories to speed up loading ammunition into gun magazines.
“Disturbingly, some of the ads identified by TTP marketed AR-15 style rifles—the weapon of choice for mass shooters in the United States—or accessories to use with an AR-15, with one ad for a rifle sight declaring, ‘EVERY AR-15 OWNER NEEDS THIS,’” the report reads.
The investigation also found a number of ads for “gun raffles” in which the weapons were raffled off to raise money for an individual or organization.
These ads appear to have gotten past Facebook’s ad review, a primarily automated process all ads have to undergo before they’re OKed to run on the platform.
In theory, the review would filter out content that promotes “the sale or use of weapons, weapon modification accessories, ammunition, or explosives,” according to the Meta site.
The TTP investigation also raised questions about Facebook’s profit off the airing of the ads. Though exact revenue data isn’t available, Meta and Facebook lean heavily on ads to prop up the platform’s business model.
“TTP’s findings shed light on another dimension of this issue, showing how Meta is regularly failing to enforce the rules it has on the books when it comes to gun-related advertising. Meta is not only allowing such content to reach users in violation of company policy, but it’s reaping a substantial amount of revenue from these ads,” the report concludes.
A spokesperson for Meta told The Hill that the platform doesn’t allow ads for the sale weapon or weapon enhancement sales, and said Facebook works to quickly correct rule violations “that slip through by mistake.”
“This report uses a tiny sample size of 173 ads out of millions of ads that run across our apps to paint a misleading picture of the experience that most people have every day,” the spokesperson said of the TTP findings.
“In reality, the vast majority of people using our apps never actually see ads that violate our policies against weapons or firearms.”
— Updated at 1:20 p.m.
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