Twitter ads reportedly targeting neo-Nazis and other hate groups

The advertising tool made it possible for advertising users to search for keywords such as "white supreme" and "anti gay", the BBC found.

Twitter, which has come under increasing criticism, has not done enough to purge the stage of its hate speech, apologizing for the obvious gaps in its terms and allowing neo-Nazis and other hate groups to take the stage.

There is already a policy on Twitter that encourages violence or prohibits hateful behavior, such as directly attacking people based on race, religion, sexual orientation and other characteristics. But the BBC reported on Wednesday that it had identified a flaw in the platform, which allowed users to post terms such as "transphobic," "white supremacist" and "anti-gay" for internet advertising.

The Twitter tool allows advertisers to direct specific ads based on their interests and activity within the service, including the keywords they use. The list of keywords should be limited, but a search for the term "neo-Nazi" indicated that the UK had a potential audience of 67,000 to 81,000 users.

The BBC found that the hashtags "Islamophobis," "Islamophobia," "Islamophobic" and "#Sylomaphobic" could reach nearly 114,000 Twitter users.

Twitter did not immediately respond to CNET's request for comment, but told the BBC that existing policies were not properly implemented to prevent keyword targeting being misused.

In a statement to the Twitter BBC, "[our] preventive measures include prohibiting certain sensitive or non-discriminatory provisions, which we will update on an ongoing basis." "In this example, some of these provisions are allowed for objective purposes. This is an error.

"We're sorry for this, and when we found out about this issue we fixed it," Twitter said.

In November, a dozen civil rights activists gathered outside Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco, demanding the banning of white supremacists from the venue. Activists have signed over 110,000 petitions calling on Twitter to ban white supremacists.

Twitter is not the first social network to be criticized for allowing advertising. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2019 that advertisers with hundreds of users, including Joseph Goebbels, Joseph Menzel and Heinrich Himmler, were able to target people interested in the perpetrators of the Holocaust.