STANDARDS

Facebook Nixes Ads on Controversial Pages

For companies that don't want association with controversy.

It looks like Facebook is trying to make up for falling behind on its "community standards." A month ago, several companies pulled their ads from the site after reports emerged of Facebook pages that promoted violence against women. And although the website has since stated that it needed to improve its system for flagging offensive content, the bigger news comes on the business side: Facebook said yesterday that it will no longer run ads on pages with sexual or violent content. The company made clear that this applies to pages that, though they meet community standards, may be controversial. So now no one who visits a page for sex toys will be distracted by pesky ads.