Facebook removes ads for gay conversion therapy after backlash

At least Facebook didn't try to justify its latest blunder as "free speech." In what's become a near weekly event now, the embattled social media platform has come under fire yet again, this time for reportedly targeting users with ads promoting "sexual purity and conversion therapy."

An investigation in the UK's Telegraph uncovered the issue, reporting that users who'd expressed interest in LGBTQ and gender issues had seen ads for "Help For Men With Same-sex Attraction" and a conversion therapy promotion titled "Homosexuality Was My Identity." A user who saw one of the ads called the message "shaming and hatred masked as love." The company says that the messages showed up as the result of a "micro-targeting" algorithm.

Facebook issued a statement Thursday stating, "We do not allow ads that promote gay conversion therapy or that imply personal attributes about people, like their sexual orientation. We quickly removed these ads after further review. While enforcement is never perfect, we’re always working to find and remove ads that violate our policies." The Facebook spokesperson added that while "sexual orientation is no longer an available filter, advertisers can target people with LGBTQ-related interests."

While the swift action is appreciated, Facebook's statement also serves yet again to highlight its own often confusing rules. The Facebook spokesperson told Teen Vogue that conversion therapy ads violate its "misleading or false content policy." While that rule seems clearcut for certain promotional messages, it's also understandable how it could be misunderstood or deliberately circumvented. For example, the company's "Personal Attributes" criteria for advertising means that "Gay dating online now!" is permissible, but "Meet other lesbians now!" is not. Its prohibition on "Misleading content" means "learn to lose belly fat" is OK, "3 shocking tips to lose all your belly fat" is not.

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Conversion therapy has become a front burner issue of late — two new highly anticipated fall films, "Boy Erased" and  "The Miseducation of Cameron Post," explore the issue from the both male and female perspective. While "Cameron Post" is fictional, "Boy Erased" is based on 33-year-old author Garrard Conley's real life experiences as a teen in the Christian Love In Action ministries program. Now known as Restoration Path, the organization still promises to help "restore those trapped in sexual and relational sin through the power of Jesus Christ." Conley told the Express earlier this year that after his own experiences there, he "struggled with suicidal feelings and it took him nearly a decade to come to terms with his sexuality."

Conley's experience is sadly not unique. A 2018 report from the Williams Institute at UCLA Law found that "Efforts to change someone's sexual orientation or gender identity are associated with poor mental health, including suicidality." Nearly 700,000 American adults have received some form of conversion therapy, and an estimated 57,000 teens will receive it before they turn 18. The American Psychological Association, World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Counseling Association all oppose the practice.

Yet despite its well-documented potentially horrific effects, conversion therapy for minors is currently outlawed in just fourteen states. (Some individual cities and counties — notably several in Florida, Pennsylvania and New York — have their own conversion bans in place, as does the District of Columbia.) The Movement Advancement Project estimates that 68 percent of the American LGBT population lives in states with no protections against conversion therapy. Just this past April, Colorado blocked a ban on the practice for the fourth year in a row. Republican Sen. Owen Hill argued that "This bill would eliminate the purpose to therapy if therapy means a desire to change."

It's an issue that echoes to the highest levels of government. Back in 2000, Mike Pence famously campaigned for Congress on the position that "Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior." His office currently maintains he "never supported conversion therapy and doesn’t support it now," saying the reference was about "safe sexual practices," but the administration's aggressive stance against LGBTQ protections continues to  raise red flags. And Shannon Royce, the current Director of the Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, spoke to the New York Times in 2005 about her opposition to marriage equality, adding, "The ex-gay movement is a very important part of the story." (The Obama administration, meanwhile, supported efforts to ban the practice.)

Meanwhile, although Facebook's decisive action against these shame-inducing targeted ads is welcome, its ethical track record remains far from squeaky clean. This year alone, the Cambridge Analytica scandal exposed just how vulnerable users have been to data collection and manipulation. Then, Mark Zuckerberg gave a bizarre defense of keeping up content from  Holocaust deniers because "I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong," at the same time the company dragged its heels in taking action about Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Facebook — and other platforms like Twitter — are currently suffering a crisis of user confidence. In July, Facebook had what is believed to be "the biggest stock-market wipeout in American history." And an August Business Insider report found that "Only 27 percent of U.S. consumers surveyed said they felt confident that their data is kept secure by social media companies." And while fixing issues like the gay conversion ads is an important step toward rebuilding user trust in the brand, it's clear that the strategy of fixing mistakes after they're pointed out is still outpacing one of creating more human checks and balances along the way.