Facebook Inc. Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg has promised to change the social network’s ad policies following last week’s controversy in which it was allowing hate speech terms in ad categories.

In a post on Facebook, Sandberg (pictured) said that she felt “disgusted and disappointed” that Facebook had allowed the categories to appear, saying that it was “totally inappropriate and a fail on our part.”

Last week’s revelation came after an investigation by ProPublica that found advertisers could target groups by using such terms as “Jew Hater,” “How to burn Jews” and “Hitler did nothing wrong.” In reaction to this, Sandberg said, “Hate has no place on Facebook – and as a Jew, as a mother, and as a human being, I know the damage that can come from hate.”

She also offered an explanation as to how such a thing could happen. That is, when small businesses buy an ad they are offered certain categories to reach their desired target audience. This can be done by filling in fields on a person’s education and employment. People may have used hate speech terms in those fields, for example labeling their occupation “Jew Hater.”

Sandberg explained that Facebook will now tighten the ad buying process so that ads cannot be targeted toward anything that “attacks people based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, sex, gender or gender identity, or disabilities or diseases.”

This, however, was always part of Facebook’s community standards. The major difference, she said, is adding more human eyes to the automated process. “From now on we will have more manual review of new ad targeting options to help prevent offensive terms from appearing,” she said. Lastly, she said that Facebook would employ an updated program to give people more options to report abuse in the ads system.

In a statement, Anti-Defamation League Chief Executive Jonathan Greenblatt, said Facebook had done the right thing in responding quickly. “We spoke to Facebook last week to understand what happened and asked for detailed steps they’d take to prevent this sort of hateful ad-targeting,” Greenblatt said. “We are glad that they are taking immediate, meaningful action, and ADL will continue to hold tech companies accountable for following through on these actions.”

Image: Financial Times via Flickr