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).'"

Comments

Re:Racism is a cause,

[Anonymous Coward]

You haven't identified the cause either. The most elite, wealthy, privileged blacks are still far more likely to commit crimes than the most disadvantaged non-blacks (including downtrodden whites in Appalachia, incredibly poor Asian immigrants with no English skills, etc).

Re:Racism is a cause,

[Beardo the Bearded]

The biggest criminals in the US are rich white men.

The amount of petty theft in the history of the US pales in comparison to what the bankers got away with in 2008.

Re:Racism is a cause,

[Anonymous Coward]

The biggest criminals and the people who destroy human life and dignity.

Yep, and the bankers got away with it in 2008.