Twitter Says Fixed Bug That Enabled Advertisers to Target Users With Racist Terms

Twitter has fixed a "bug" on its platform that allowed advertisers to target "Jew haters" and others with racial epithets and terms like "Nazi", the microblogging site announced.

According to a report by The Daily Beast on Friday, Twitter ads returned 26.3 million users who may respond to the term "wetback", 18.6 million to "Nazi" and 14.5 million to "n***er".

"We determined these few campaigns were able to go through because of a bug that we have now fixed," recode.net quoted a Twitter spokesperson as saying.

"Twitter prohibits and prevents ad campaigns involving offensive or inappropriate content, and we will continue to strongly enforce our policies."

Earlier this week, Facebook faced criticism after reports emerged that the social networking giant allowed advertisers to target users based on categories like "Ku-Klux-Klan" and "Jew hater".

Google was also found to allow advertisers to specifically target ads to people typing racist and bigoted terms into its search bar.

While both implemented changes to its targeting platform, the incident has spurred fresh debate as to whether these giant internet companies should add more pro-active human oversight to their algorithms, especially to filter inappropriate and hateful speech.