The UK government is targeting minority groups with social media ads, despite Facebook ban on all advertising based on race, religion and sexual orientation.
A range of government agencies and police forces are openly flouting this ban, with hyper-targeted ads promoting messages around migration, jobs and crime to minority ethnic groups.
The news comes in the face of blanket ban by Facebook imposed in 2021 that prohibited targeted advertising based on protected characteristics.
Alarmingly, many harmful stereotypes were found within the ads. One government campaign aimed at helping people off benefits targeted users interested in ‘afro-textured hair’ and the ‘West Indies cricket team’.
Ads for local council support services were also found to be targeting people with interests including ‘hijabs’ and ‘Islamic dietary requirements’. Additionally, LGBTQ+ content was advertised to people interested in “genderqueer” issues and the TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race.
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The so-called ‘microtargeting’ was uncovered following an analysis of over 12,000 ads that ran on Facebook and Instagram between late 2020 and 2023, which were then supplied to British academics by Facebook’s parent company, Meta.
“The government must be transparent about its use of these intrusive surveillance advertising techniques and halt any targeting of people based on ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation by proxy,” Big Brother Watch head of research, Jake Hurfurt, told the Guardian.
Although such targeting has been outright banned by Facebook, the research finds that advertisers can get around this firewall by advertising to people with certain ‘interests’.
Such interest labels, assigned by Facebook based on social activity, can range from food tastes to religious beliefs, combined with gender, age, race and other characteristics for preciser targeting.
For instance, a 2022 Home Office campaign aimed at deterring asylum seekers from countries such as Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, targeting people with interests ranging from “Afghanistan national cricket team”, “football in Iraq” to “Syrian cuisine”.
Another government campaign targeted ads for its Kickstart scheme to create jobs for young people on universal credit using interests like “afro-textured hair” and the Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Indian cricket teams.
A government spokesperson said: “Campaigns are always designed to effectively reach key audiences and ensure value for money for the taxpayer. The advertising channels are selected based on their ability to engage with audiences at a national, regional and local level.”
However, researchers who studied the data said ad targeting raised concerns about “invasive” profiling, including “some particularly troubling” targeting of minority groups.
