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Racism In Online Ad Targeting
An anonymous reader writes "Most of us are familiar with advertisements in online web searching, and by now we've grown accustomed to scrolling past the 'sponsored' results to get to the real responses to our query. And we know the ads are context-sensitive; for example, searching for our favorite Federation Starship will bring up ads for a similarly-named car-rental agency. But now a Harvard University professor has found a more disturbing trend in those contextual ads: racism. 'Sweeney says she has evidence that black identifying names are up to 25 per cent more likely to be served with an arrest-related ad. "There is discrimination in delivery of these ads," she concludes. Sweeney gathered this evidence by collecting over 2000 names that were suggestive of race. For example, first names such as Trevon, Lakisha and Darnell suggest the owner is black while names like Laurie, Brendan and Katie suggest the owner is white. She then entered these plus surnames into Google.com and Reuters.com and examined the ads they returned. Most names generated ads for public records. However, black-identifying names turned out to be much more likely than white-identifying names to generate ads that including the word "arrest" (60 per cent versus 48 per cent).'"
But does anyone know what the most popular names associated with arrest rates happen to be? Maybe there's actual correlation there?
And I'm not saying that's correct either, since there is likely strong racial bias in many arrests made by officers themselves...
Targeted ads are by definition discriminating.
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
Or could it be that we already know what the cause is, but it is inconvenient to mention it?
Black cops arrest black perps at least at the same rate as white cops.
Black Judges sentence black criminals to terms that do not differ from those by White Judges.
Citation Here.
There is some evidence that Black Officers arrest blacks at a higher rate than white officers,
probably because they don't have to be worried about being charged with racism.
Findings suggest that officer race has direct influence on arrest outcomes and there are substantive differences between White and Black officers in the decision to arrest. In general, White officers in our study were more likely to arrest suspects than Black officers, but Black suspects were more likely to be arrested when the decision maker was a Black officer.
Why is it racist to use black crime statistics, but not sexist to use male crime statistics?
F. Robert Jack
So how many people did they rape? You know, attack a woman, hold her down, beat the shit out of her, then forcefully have sex with her, kick her in the head and leave her for dead alone in an alleyway?
Why are you obsessed with the monetary amount of damage? It's just money. The biggest criminals and the people who destroy human life and dignity.