On Friday, Facebook said it will soon begin to build on its platform “topic exclusion controls” to allow marketers greater flexibility to filter out certain types of content from appearing alongside their advertising.
This comes after businesses such as Coca-Cola Co and Starbucks boycotted Facebook in July for not doing enough to curb hate speech in police custody on their site after the death of George Floyd, an American Black man.
For years, advertisers have argued that major social media sites do too little to stop the presence of advertising alongside hate speech, fake news and other offensive content. Facebook, as well as YouTube and Twitter, signed an agreement with major advertisers in September to curb harmful online content.
In a blog post on Friday, Facebook said the controls would help advertisers decide how Facebook News Feed displays their advertising, adding that it will begin testing the controls with a small group of advertisers, a phase that can take about a year to complete.
