Paul Twocock, Director of Campaigns, Policy and Research at Stonewall agreed, telling The Telegraph: "This content is offensive and an insidious attempt to undermine the self-esteem of LGBT people seeing this material. Tessa Ann Schwarz complained to the company, saying that the video was “really upsetting”, and said: “I don’t know why Facebook has permitted this group to target LGBTQ people, who have intentionally sought out community and education amongst peers, for shaming and hatred masked as love.” One lesbian woman was shown a video entitled “Homosexuality Was My Identity”, aimed at promoting “harmful” conversion therapy, because she had 'liked' LGBT pages on Facebook. Two gay conversion adverts the Telegraph reported to Facebook were pushed to people who were likely to be young and LGBT.Ĭharities accused Facebook of preying on members of vulnerable communities and urged Facebook to tighten its regulation on micro-targeting. When users clicked on the "why am I seeing this ad" button on the advert it said Facebook had noticed they were interested in "gender issues."Ĭompanies are able to direct their adverts at Facebook users who are most likely to be interested in their product. LGBT users complained they were confronted with adverts promoting "sexual purity" and conversion therapy for gay and lesbian people because of the pages they have shown an interest in.
The social media company has removed the posts after the Telegraph exposed a flaw with its micro-targeting algorithm.
Facebook has been targeting young LGBT people with “predatory” 'gay cure' adverts, a Telegraph investigation has found.