Soft News

Facebook-parent Meta will remove the ability to

target ads based on sensitive categories
Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, said Tuesday it plans to limit
advertisers' ability to target users based on certain sensitive categories.
Starting next year, it will remove thousands of "Detailed Targeting" keywords
to target ads to specific users in categories such as health, race or ethnicity,
political affiliation, religion and sexual orientation.

Targeted advertising has long been central to the company's massive digital
ads business. But for years, Facebook has faced criticism for allowing highly
specific targeting that could, for example, allow advertisers to direct racist ads
to users based on their activity on its platforms. In 2019, Facebook settled
several lawsuits that alleged its advertising platform allowed for discrimination
in housing, employment and credit ads. As part of the settlement, it set up a
new portal for such ads. Tuesday's announcement marks the broadest action
the company has taken yet to address concerns related to ad targeting.

In a blog post Tuesday, Meta (FB) vice president of product marketing for ads
Graham Mudd said the move is a "difficult decision" made to "better match
people's evolving expectations of how advertisers may reach them on our
platform and address feedback from civil rights experts, policymakers and
other stakeholders on the importance of preventing advertisers from abusing
the targeting options we make available."
The announcement comes as the company faces scrutiny over the real-world
harms caused by its platforms that were revealed in the "Facebook Papers," a
trove of internal documents offering unprecedented insight into some of the
company's biggest problems. The documents were provided to lawmakers by
former employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen, and obtained by
dozens of news organizations, including CNN.

In an announcement that coincided with its scramble to contain the fallout

from the Facebook Papers, the company announced last month that it would
change its name to Meta. It also said last week it will stop using
facial-recognition software that could automatically recognize people in photos
and videos on its Facebook app (although the company may still use such
software in other products now and in the future).

Even after Tuesday's announcement, there will still be thousands of other

detailed targeting categories that are not considered sensitive, such as users
who are interested in football or more general categories like age, gender and
location, that advertisers will still be able to use. That leaves open the
possibility of tangential terms being used to target the same audiences they
previously reached using sensitive keywords.

"We strongly believe that the best advertising experiences are personalized,"
Mudd said. He added that advertisers will have other options for targeting
users, such as directing ads to people who have engaged with their pages or
videos.
The change will apply globally to the Facebook, Instagram and Messenger
apps, as well as Meta's "audience network," through which it places ads on
third-party apps. It will start rolling out on January 19, 2022, when advertisers
will no longer be able to select keywords from sensitive categories for new ad
campaigns, and in March, existing campaigns reliant on such keywords will no
longer function, according to the company.

The company places users in the categories based on their interactions on the
platform, such as which pages they like and which ads they click on. Targeting
keywords that will now be removed include terms like "Catholic church" and
"chemotherapy."

Meta also said it plans to give users greater control over what kinds of ads
they see.

"Today, people can opt to see fewer ads related to politics, parenting, alcohol
and pets," Mudd said. "Early next year, we will be giving people control of
more types of ad content, including gambling and weight loss, among others."

While the ad targeting changes will apply to Meta's existing products, it's not
clear whether the company will apply the same rules to future platforms as it
pursues its ambitious plan to build the "metaverse," a new, immersive version
of the internet using VR and AR technologies.

Source:
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/09/tech/meta-facebook-ad-targeting-change/in
dex.html
Hard News
Long hours ‘a key cause of work-related deaths’

[NEW DELHI] Almost two million people worldwide die of work-related causes,
according to joint estimates by the World Health Organization and the International
Labor Organization, which cite long working hours, pollution and poor conditions as
major factors.

The Global Monitoring Report found that 81 per cent of the 1.9 million work-related
deaths in 2016 occurred as a result of non-communicable diseases, including chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease, stroke and ischaemic heart disease (heart ailments
caused by narrowed heart arteries), while 19 per cent were caused by work-related
injuries including road injuries, falls, drowning and injuries by mechanical forces.

“It’s shocking to see so many people literally being killed by their jobs,” said WHO
director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who described the findings as a
“wake-up call to countries and businesses to improve and protect the health and safety
of workers”.

According to the estimates, work-related exposure to gasses, fumes and particulate

matter led to an estimated 450,000 deaths from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

“The risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has been estimated to be increased
by 58—182 per cent among people occupationally exposed to particulate matter,
gasses and fumes, compared with people unexposed to this occupational risk factor,”
the report says.
In 2016, work-related exposure to asbestos, silica and arsenic led to the deaths of
209,481, 42,258 and 7,589, respectively. Asbestos exposure also resulted in cancers of
the ovary, larynx and a malignant disease called mesothelioma.

Between 2000 and 2016, there was a 14 per cent decrease in work-related deaths per
population across the globe, the joint estimates reveal. However, WHO says in a press
statement that “deaths from heart disease and stroke associated with exposure to long
working hours rose by 41 and 19 per cent respectively. This reflects an increasing trend
in this relatively new and psychosocial occupational risk factor”.

Yuka Ujita, senior specialist at ILO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, says 19
major occupational risk factors and their associated health outcomes were analysed to
obtain a precise estimate of the number of work-related deaths.

“A disproportionately large number of work-related deaths occur in workers in

South-East Asia and the Western Pacific,” Ujita tells SciDev.Net. “More specifically, the
highest number of deaths from stroke and ischemic heart disease attributable to
exposure to long working hours was reported for the South-East Asia Region.” Yuka Ujita,
ILO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific

Frank Pega, technical officer for environment, climate change, and health at WHO and
lead author of the report, tells SciDev.Net that in South-East Asia, especially in low- and
middle-income countries, the largest risk factor is exposure to long working hours.
Workers in the informal economy who live in poverty may be forced to work long hours
for financial survival, he says.

Milind Kandlikar, professor at the University of British Columbia, Canada, notes that
many workers particularly in South and South-East Asia are in industries with poor
working conditions and are exposed to high levels of air pollution. “These exposures
can also lead to deaths from stroke, heart disease, and diseases of the lung,” he tells
Scidev.Net.

“That exposure to long working hours is the risk factor that causes the largest
number of deaths is highly concerning, especially because our estimates
show that one in ten workers globally works hazardously long hours,” says
Pega. “We must now act together, as governments, employers and workers,
to apply the known legal, regulatory, policy and health service solutions to limit
working time to the maximum healthy limits.”

Source:
https://www.scidev.net/asia-pacific/news/long-hours-a-key-cause-of-work-related-deaths
/