Google allowed advertisers to target racist, anti-Semitic search phrases

Google allowed advertisers to target ads for people searching racist and anti-Semitic phrases like "black people ruin neighborhoods" and "Jewish control of banks," BuzzFeed News discovered, through its own experimental ad campaign.

Google would also suggest other offensive phrases based off the keywords. "Why do Jews ruin everything," for example, prompted advertisers to also run ads on "the evil Jew":

Google has since disabled all the keywords found by BuzzFeed News, although "Blacks destroy everything" is reportedly still appearing as eligible to run ad campaigns on.

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On Thursday, Facebook said it will no longer let advertisers reach users who have said they are interested in anti-Semitic topics, including "how to burn Jews," or who called themselves "Jew haters," which were apparently categories created by an algorithm. Read more about Facebook's advertising at The Week and Google's at BuzzFeed News.