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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).'"
not an effect. Making use of stats is not racism. Racism is denying the fact that many blacks in the US have been disadvantaged and largely as a result are more likely to commit crimes and get arrested. Pretending the numbers don't exist is horrible.
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...
Where people don't really understand what real racism actually is anymore.
Which I guess is a good thing? But, it makes people that try to bend anything to be racism as complete fools.
It's not racism if the ads were being generated purely on statistical models. It may be a sad reflection of the state of African-Americans, but unless you can show how people have manipulated the process for some reason, it's merely statistics.
If these keywords weren't generating revenue for the ad buyers they wouldn't bid on them. It's really that simple. Those names make money for marketers with those ads.
"Ubuntu" -- an African word, meaning "Slackware is too hard for me". - stolen from Dan C alt.os.linux.slackware
This isn't racism; it is namism. Nowhere in the process is race ever part of the equation. If people named "Shaquille" are 5x more like to commit crimes, then that is a stereotype of the name "Shaquille"...a namist conclusion.
Our facination or eagerness to link things to skin color is really counterproductive and ignores the real issue. IMO, names bring about stereotypes moreso than skin color. It spans gender, language, and race. What would you think the first time you saw someone with the last name "Hitler"?
Pick a subject, any subject, the reality of that subject is politically incorrect to someone, somewhere. You are politically incorrect to your ancestors just as your descendants will condemn you for being politically incorrect. I say this and it doesn't matter who you, what your culture is, where you live, your religion (or lack of religion) what your values are, what your accomplishments are or any other given thing. History is politically incorrect and it will remain that way because that is human nature.l
Articles like this are rage mongering and professional trolling deserve to admonished. A little more tolerance by society would go a lot longer to ease race / religious / gender / etc relations that mongering articles like this ever will. It's why MLK was so popular and the like's of Jessie Jackson can never get past 3rd rate achievers. It's the difference between trolling for dollars and dreaming of tolerance.
Targeted ads are by definition discriminating.
Ascalante: Your bride is over 3,000 years old.
Kull: She told me she was 19!
isn't it racist to give them to your kids?
bickerdyke
This is not "racism". Racism is a belief that one race is superior to another and/or a hatred or intolerance of another race.
At most, this is prejudice.
It's the DATA that's racist!
Or reality?
This is futile. If black identifying names are 25% more related to arrest then that is what they'll get in the ads. There is no racism there. We are trying to hide the truth by fear that we might seem racist.
Kit: The letter K appears in this script 1,456 times. That's perfectly divisible by 3.
Freddy: So what? So what you saying?
Kit: What am I saying? KKK appears in this script 486 times!
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
From TFA: "A more insidious explanation is that society as a whole is to blame. If Googleâ(TM)s Adsense service learns which ad combinations are more effective, it would first serve the arrest-related ads to all names at random. But this would change if it were to discover that click-throughs are more likely when these ads are served against a black-identifying name. In other words, the results merely reflect the discriminatory pattern of clicks from ordinary people."
Um... no. If "black sounding" names are discovered to be more likely to click through 'arrest ads', that's not the result of discrimination by "white sounding" clicks. No matter what I (with a "white sounding" name") click on, I can't make or influence a "black sounding" name to click on an 'arrest ad'. Self selection via clicks (sad as it is, and unquestionably driven by discrimination elsewhere in society) is not discrimination via clicks.
However, I have a keen proficiency when it comes to grasping the obvious. Black people make better running backs than white people. Asian's named Nguyen are more likely than white's named Cletus to get academic scholarships. At a Bar, an Hispanic male in his 20's is a much better percentage bet for party favors than a 50-something white woman. Should I be offended that Google singles me out for testosterone supplements?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
This Harvard professor is assuming that people are being racist purposefully through adsense when she no real evidence to prove it.
I don't see any numbers to prove whether her percentages are even statistically significant or not.
Even if her results are correct, anyone even remotely familiar with google adsense would come to the more likely conclusion that the content of web pages reflect that people with those names are more likely to have been arrested. Almost all of the keyword combinations people use in adsense are ones recommended by adsense based on a few seeded keywords and adsense generates those recommendations automatically based on the content of the internet.
It's mustn't be easy being Green.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Yes, its stats. That's not the point. The study illustrates the racism that is endemic in society. Not just the U.S., but in every human society.
When a business targets African-Americans by buying names associated with African-Americans, that's textbook racism. Why? Because it's making assumptions about individuals based on their membership in a group.
Ditto the self-serving argument that "Racism is denying the fact that many blacks in the US have been disadvantaged and largely as a result are more likely to commit crimes and get arrested". Applying perceived generalizations about a group to individuals you do not know is textbook racism.
Racism wasn't some passing phase of American history.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Or connecting the dots?
What's next? Serving up maxi-pad ads to female names?
I'm calling my congressperson.
They reflect searched content as written and only show the inherent racism of content generated across the web.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Black Americans represent 28.0% of arrests, and 12.6% of the population, which works out to 2.2 times the per-capita rate of all other Americans. This ratio is higher for murder and robbery. Thus it is perfectly normal that black identifying names correlate better with arrest records.
No bias here. If I was one of this guy's students, I'll ask my money back.
If they detect that you are a woman, a much higher percentage of tampons ads appear. Simply insulting! If they detect that you are old (by having a name like Grover, for example) they will bomb you with ads for nursery homes. There is no end to it! It's almost like if they were targeting the ads to what their databases say your interests will be. They should call it targeted advertising then!
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Google saves your searches and then customizes ads based on what YOU search. The only logical conclusion one can make is that black people in the U.S. are 25% more likely to search items related to criminal activities and their name has nothing to do with the results served.
So, no one would see a problem with advertising for employment towards women being skewed to promote jobs as teachers and secretaries while reducing job advertisements for managers and doctors?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
So, the TLDR is you're saying all moms should name their kids with white names, because that apparently magically makes the kids turn out to not be criminals?
More like:
Parents should be aware of the perception others will have if you name your kid such-and-such. If you live in a strongly anti-Semitic country, naming your kid Abraham or Ester will force them to live in an environment where people see their names and subtly or overtly discriminate against them. If you live in a society that diminishes the value of women, you may want to give your daughter a gender-neutral name like Chris to reduce the amount of discrimination she faces.
It's sad but true that there is still some anti-Black racial discrimination in the United States. For this reason, anyone who gives their kid a "Black-sounding" name needs to be aware of this. Some parents may deliberately do this in order to provide "teachable moments" for both their own children and people who interact with their kids.
In any case, the whole thing will probably be moot with respect to "Black" names in 100 years, just as it is pretty much moot for names that, 100 years ago, were associated with groups like Irish, Hungarian, Polish, and other European countries that were considered "inferior" to the "Anglo-Saxon" groups that dominated society at the time.
Bottom line:
Name your kid whatever you want, just be aware of the the prejudices that still exist in society and that the name you give your child may influence how much discrimination he or she faces.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
It's a Festivus miracle!
Take a group of kids that have about the same intellect.
Tell half of them they are more stupid than the other half. Give them the same assignments but not the same expectations - tell the "dumb" group "it's okay you only made a C" or even "For a dumb kid, that's good work" as you hand them a paper that only scored a C. Tell the "smart" kids "I know you can do better" when they turn in A- work. Within weeks if not days, the kids will be putting out work that matches the expectations they are given. The "dumb" ones will study less, and when they do study the stress of an inferior self-image may even cause them to not learn as easily as if they didn't have this stress. Continue this "experiment" for 12 years and you'll wind up with the "smart" group significantly ahead of the "dumb" group.
Translate this into the real world:
If a manager interviews job candidates with a mindset of "he's got a Black-sounding name and voice, I'm going to look for excuses to not hire him during the phone interview, or if he's clearly good enough to get past the phone screen and he turns out to be the best candidate, I'll not give him good assignments until he's worked extra-hard to prove he can handle entry-level assignments" and "he's got a white-sounding name and voice, I'll look for every reason to get him past the phone screen, and if he is in a tie with a non-white candidate I'll hire him, and I'll give him better assignments than non-white candidates" well, you will wind up with a department where non-white candidates aren't as successful as the white one. At least until that manager's boss wonders why his department is under-performing and fires him.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
...Honestly, I believe we don't go looking for the problem because we are afraid of what we might find.
A need for more socialism: welfare, free education, solidarity, etc... :)
I'm sure all you Americans are afraid of that
Notice that poverty is one of the few problems you can solve by simply throwing more money at it.
So the solution is quite simple and foolproof, throw money that the problem.
I'm not saying it isn't expensive, but significantly fewer poor people is good for the economy in the long run.
Out of curiosity, did they control for browser/ip/cookies?
We know that major search engines personalize the results.
They do this by tracking cookies, browsers, ip addresses. Unless they controlled for those things, then this could just be a flawed experiment.
Also do those names, unfortunately, have more pop-cultural references related to crime or arrests? It could just be revealing an unfortunate historical social trend. In which case more positive news with people with those names would stem the tide of "racist ad results."
I know when I was setting up google ads I was never asked the ethnicity of my target market.
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
I went to Junior High with a guy whose name was "Tyrone Jackson", and he was a totally average white guy. Every year, at the beginning of the school year, the would call his name on the first day of class. When he'd say "here", there was always a two second silence by the teachers as they tried to figure it out in their head.
Laughing always ensued.
are bogan names, not black names (and so are combinations of them, like Trekishanell). Therefore, serving up arrest related ads for these people is not racist, it's socio-economic-ist.
Tell George to wait! - George Carlin
As someone who grew up with an unusual name, I can tell you that stereotyping a person by name is not limited to race. In my experience, guys with names like Joe, Chris, and Jeff always seemed to have girlfriends and never had any trouble getting (or stealing) a new one when the current one turned to boom boom. On the other hand, guys with weird names rarely had girlfriends.
I don't supposed she checked out the names of all the folks arrested. She might find that there is evidence there that suggests Google is merely following the numbers.
Now, she could argue that law enforcement is discriminatory. But that would be even more support for Google's efforts being evidence based and not a result of bias. It doesn't matter if you were arrested because of what you did or because of your name or color. You still need to make bail and get a lawyer.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Poor defendants can't afford bail or lawyers, so they have an incentive to agree to a plea deal. Once they have a criminal conviction, it becomes much harder to get a good-paying job, and there you go.
A good lawyer can usually get a much better deal on a plea-bargain, reducing the chance of a felony rap and, for misdemeanors, increasing the chance of some kind of diversion or alternative-sentencing that doesn't result in a permanent criminal record.
Scenario:
Two 19 year old drug addicts with clean records in separate incidents are caught with a small amount of meth, just enough that they could be convicted of a minimal felony and get anywhere from probation to 2 years in prison. The county has a drug-addiction-diversion program for young adults.
Both are married and have a child. One is Black and poor. The other comes from an upper-middle-class family and is White.
If the prosecutor is a bigot, he'll steer the White guy into the diversion program and threaten to throw the book at the Black guy.
If he's not a bigot, he'll give the same options to both people, but because of the wait for trial and bail costs, the Black guy may choose to take a quick plea. The options are:
* Post $10,000 refundable bond or pay a bail-bondsman $1000 non-refundable, OR
* Stay in jail until trial or until a bed opens up in the drug-treatment center if you take the plea deal, OR
* Plea out now.
The plea agreement is:
* 2 years of pre-trial deferment, during which time you will
** attend a 30-day inpatient addiction treatment program at your own expense (cost: $10,000, but a local charity will pay half if you are poor)
** Spend 30 days in jail over the first 15 weeks after release from treatment (normally weekends, assuming you work Monday-Friday)
** attend at least 3 NA or similar meetings a week in the 90 days
** see a therapist or participate in group therapy at least weekly for the first 90 days after the inpatient treatment, at your own expense (cost: $25/week for group therapy run by a local charity, more for non-charity or 1-1 options)
** For the remainder of the 2 years, attend an NA or similar meeting weekly and stay in contact with the equivalent of a probation officer weekly and have in-person monthly visits
** For the entire 2 years, be subject to searches and drug screenings at any time
** Be employed, enrolled in school, or actively seeking work the entire period after release from the inpatient program
** The first failure will result in an evaluation of your addiction and a return to whatever stage of treatment you need, but in any case your total time on supervised pre-trial release will be extended by 6 months and you will serve another 30 days in jail over the next 15 weeks that you aren't in rehab.
** You may at any time terminate this agreement and be sentenced to 6 months in jail followed by 18 months of probation, during which time you will agree to random drug tests and searches. If you make this choice you will have a misdemeanor drug-offense record.
** Before signing this agreement, you may choose to go to court on the felony charge. If convicted, we intend to request a sentence of 2 years in prison, with 1 year suspended. During the suspension you will agree to normal terms of parole, including random drug screening and searches. If you violate these terms you will be returned to prison for the remaining year.
The middle-class guy hires a lawyer who bonds him out then tells his client "they caught you red-handed, there's no sloppy recordkeeping, take the deal." He takes the deal. The waiting list for a bed at the subsidized treatment center is 3 weeks, so his parents sent him to a private facility. Two years after entering rehab, he's holding his 2-year NA chip and celebrating the dismissal of his case.
The poor guy's court-appointed lawyer tells him the same thing. Unfortunately there's no way he can scrape together $5K to pay for rehab and his lawyer isn't smart enough or is just too busy to help him f
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The overwhelming majority of lottery winners are broke again within a few years. That proves throwing money doesn't solve the problem of "50 inch plasma in a trailer" culture.
The problem is that some subcultures, and also general American culture more than some others, value flash over investment, rims over tuition. Throwing money at many people just means they'll have bigger rims on their hoopty, more gold around their neck.
If someone from Japan or India gets $10,000, they'll turn it into a college degree or a business. Give some. Americans $10,000 and they'll put a fown payment on a tricked out 2006 Cadillac at the note lot.
If you design a study starting using qualities such as 'name x, y, and z are more likely associated with blacks' and 'a, b, and c are more likely associated with whites' than the STUDY is racist!. In other words if you define your social experiment in such a way as to look for racism then don't be surprised that you find it...it is quite possible that with the group of names used that some are more likely to show up on arrest warrants & such, that's the effect being seen...the assumption that because some names are more likely used by blacks and others more likely used by whites that the presentation of the data is racist is simply WRONG!...To determine that the result is racist you'd have to determine that the search result was built by first identifying that the name is 'in the group most likely used by blacks' and then return an ad that suggested that the end user wanted to know about 'black topics' (whether arrest/criminal activity or otherwise).
Social science is a misnomer, at least while the quality of their 'science' is at this level.
I keep getting ads for bail bonds and DUII attorneys. This started happening lately -- the only change in my behavior lately is that I've stopped buying and drinking beer (reasons to do with the circumference of my waistline). While it's extremely disturbing, I wouldn't be surprised if that information -- somehow -- is filtering back to Internet ad companies. Who the fuck knows how they know, but they do.
I know pathetically stupid, loser asian people. I know highly inteligent and educated black people. I know a lot of people who most definitely defy the stereotypes which we are all very aware of. But there was a time when I would have defended the practices being described. I will not defend them. It's rather disgusting if this is the truth.
But all that said, stereotypes exist because of an overwhelming preponderance of anecdotal evidence. And in the end, advertisers want to get their ads in front of the people who would be the most interested in seeing them, So in "bad neighborhoods" we see billboards for bondsmen and lawyers among other things. And I have even seen this online when I am in areas with wifi in bad neighborhoods. While disgusting, it would not be practiced if it weren't also effective. So we shouldn't be asking "why are advertisers responding to statistical evidence?" We should be asking how can we make positive changes that result in a change in statistics!
Because if we are seeing to have a practice which is largely based on statistical evidence, we are merely seeking to institutionalize denial of the truth. I'm just not inclined to deny a problem when solving it would seem more appropriate.
The appropriate term for this is "statistical discrimination," and there is an academic literature surrounding it. See Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_discrimination_(economics)
For example, if you want to avoid hiring ex-convicts, you can simply not consider any black men and you will make your job a lot easier. However, this obviously has a negative effect on black men who are not ex-convicts (and a positive effect on all other groups). The test for whether statistical discrimination is bad is whether it affects a particular group negatively. For example, old people can't get affordable private health insurance in the USA because they're so much more likely to become ill. To remedy this negative effect, we started Medicare.
Can be very NSFW!
To say that only the blacks suffer from racism is ridiculous
And to say that because the blacks suffering from racism they can't be perpetrators of racism themselves is equally ridiculous
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
What's the German policy on ganja?
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
I can't imagine how anyone with a name like that would have a personal bias in interpreting these results. No sirree.
I'm sure there is.
It's just money.
searching for our favorite Federation Starship will bring up ads for a similarly-named car-rental agency
Excelsior Car Hire? I have never heard of them.
It's the DATA that's racist!
Or reality?
Well, reality does have a well-known liberal bias.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
It's being unable to pay the rent when your body and mind give out in your old age and you're unable to work, leaving you dying cold and alone in the streets.
Just money my ass.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
... feminine hygiene products are marketed towards women, and beer ads target men.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
This garbage is more racist than the Google ad bias. 5 Insightful? Just when I think Slashdot is progressive...
This "racism" crap is similar to the old time witch hunts, or the "red scare". These anti-racist nuts are looking for signs of "racism" in every single nook and cranny. Exactly like the anti-Communist fanatics. Wonder if they go home at night and carefully make sure that there are no holes in their bed sheets before going to sleep?
OMG! I just realized that there's WHITE on the American flag and no black or brown! Racism! Racism! Racism!
It also appears that White is disproportionately represented on these comment boards! Only the fonts are black and the overwhelming amount of space is White! /. is obviously racist.
Give it a F***ing REST!
These advertising companies care about what you see and where you click and don't give a $#!T what color your eyes and fingers are.
Search all first names of defendants in criminal cases and then target ads for legal services to the top 5% of the names?
It seems some are in denial, example is "liberal" Hollywood like GOP keep insisting white people center of focus. I don't track movies but someone mentioned on PBS News Hour that 90% of leading actors of major motion pictures are white guys (there are many other ethnic groups out there but much of Hollywood and Madison Ave doesn't know they exist). Other example, "Real Housewives of Orange County [CA]" are all white (amazing, I only see hispanic and asians in Orange County). And when do white people see black people? Many do not except on TV either as a sports star, entertainer, or getting dragged off to jail. Some exceptions such as the President or Neil deGrasse Tyson. Yes, it gets scary posting topics like this, mentioning the R word can get your ass flamed.
mfwright@batnet.com
You don't get kicked out onto the streets if you have no money! No you live in India or something? Even if you were in India, your family would take care of you!
*Do you live in India?
I live in California, and if I don't pay my rent I get a three-day pay-or-quit notice, meaning if I don't pay I forfeit my lease. It would then take a couple months to actually evict me, but it would eventually happen with no long delay. My father, in brighter days, rented rooms of our house out to other people to help us pay our mortgage, and in some cases had to follow this procedure, so I know first hand how it works. I also have friends who have suffered through it and ended up living on the streets, literally begging for change. Just last December I let some temporarily sleep on my couch during the rain, when I found them trying to sleep in a tree near my house. (I'm technically not allowed to do that, but for short periods I can get away with it).
And you are assuming people have family who can take care of them, or who have family who are able to take care of them. My mom rents a room smaller than mine and couldn't sublet even if there was room for me, and my dad is selling off the trailer he lives in to camp (like outdoors) on a friend's farmland in the nearby countryside because he can't make his mortgage anymore. None of my aunts or uncles have room to take me in, they're all busy enough supporting my maternal grandma who has nowhere but their various couches to sleep. My maternal grandpa has a huge house, but he is senile and his evil new wife (my step-grandmother) controls all of his fortune and won't give a penny to help any of his blood family, only her own. My paternal grandparents are dead.
And I'm still young, with living family at all. I was thinking of old people, the kind of people who would have money in the kind of investments that the banking scandals ruined, planning to use it to live off of when they're old. Their families are all long dead, and you can't always assume they have kids of their own, or that those kids would step up to the plate to take care of them, or even could. (I couldn't support my mom if I had to; I could get evicted for letting her move into my bedroom and sleep on my floor just the same as she could if she did that to me).
Of course all of this would be unproblematic is it was actually feasible for average people to climb out of the cycle of rent and own their own property. That way, all else failing, there's at least the family home to fall back on. But then half of the whole banking fiasco had to do with the seriously fucked up housing market, so that's really the locus of the whole problem anyway.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Re: astrology (NOT astronomy)
;>)
I have a friend who teaches Physics, and a secretary who was writing/drafting a legal letter for her mislabelled her job as "Professor of Psychics" instead of as a professor of Physics. How very Hogwarts-ian of them if they could have tacked on a professor of potions along with it!