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Facebook Signs Agreement With Washington State To End Discriminatory Ad Targeting (reuters.com)
Last month, Washington filed a lawsuit against Facebook (and Google) for failing to disclose political ad spending, as required by state law. Washington law requires that "political campaign and lobbying contributions and expenditures be fully disclosed to the public and that secrecy is to be avoided." Today, as reported by Reuters, Facebook has signed an agreement with the state to stop third-party advertisers in the U.S. from excluding protected groups from seeing their ads. From the report: Facebook confirmed the agreement with the state, and said the announcement is part of a long process to ensure that tools used to target ads on the social network are safe, civil, and fair. "We've removed thousands of categories related to potentially sensitive personal attributes -- like race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion -- from our exclusion targeting tools," the company said, pointing to its efforts from over a year-and-a-half. The legally binding agreement with Washington state requires Facebook to make the changes to its ad platform within 90 days, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said.
Ads should only be topic based. Things like search criteria, clicked links, subject matter of the webpage.
Ditch tracking.
I'm sure of two things: My faithful canine companion will be on the wrong side of a door shortly, and advertisers will not pay for data on potential customers if it's filtered through spectacles that preclude disseminating the differences inherent in race, color, creed, religion, gender, income, age, and toilet paper preference.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I was just getting used to the end of Net Neutrality and having my ISP be able to block all these annoying GOP websites and ads begging for money. Now you are telling me that I'm going to have to see them?
Noooooo!!!!!
Have gnu, will travel.
From U.S. Patent 9,692,838, assigned to Facebook, Inc. for Generating business insights using beacons on online social networks:
"In particular embodiments, authorization to access or view content deposited at one or more beacons 310 (e.g., by a user, social-networking system 160, or third-party system 170) may be based on conditions set by the creator or depositor of the content or by another entity. A restrictive condition on access to certain content at one or more beacons 310 may include membership in a specified group. For example, authorized group members may include, by example and not by way of limitation: members of a certain social club; users who have purchased access rights to the particular content; direct connections of a particular user node or concept node in social graph 200; users having phone numbers with a certain area code or prefix; registered users of a downloaded mobile device application, other suitable conditions, or any combination thereof. Restrictions to access may additionally be based on user-specific information, including but not limited to: demographic attributes of the user (e.g., age, gender, nationality, race, ethnicity, and/or locality);"
So now I'll get non targeted targeted ads. I can expect Geri curl, tampon, and spanx ads to go with my jewish singles dating site banner ads. I think I'd rather be profiled...
No African Americans, Hebrews, or women were harmed in the crafting of this overly sarcastic post.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
From U.S. Patent 9,692,838, assigned to Facebook, Inc. for Generating business insights using beacons on online social networks:
"In particular embodiments, authorization to access or view content deposited at one or more beacons 310 (e.g., by a user, social-networking system 160, or third-party system 170) may be based on conditions set by the creator or depositor of the content or by another entity. A restrictive condition on access to certain content at one or more beacons 310 may include membership in a specified group. For example, authorized group members may include, by example and not by way of limitation: members of a certain social club; users who have purchased access rights to the particular content; direct connections of a particular user node or concept node in social graph 200; users having phone numbers with a certain area code or prefix; registered users of a downloaded mobile device application, other suitable conditions, or any combination thereof. Restrictions to access may additionally be based on user-specific information, including but not limited to: demographic attributes of the user (e.g., age, gender, nationality, race, ethnicity, and/or locality);"
Which means you can target an ad toward African Americans if you want. If you have a product that is marketed to African Americans, why would you want to pay for clicks from others? If I am selling Bibles, I might want to target my ad to Christians and not have it pop up on everyone else' view.
Just because a feature can be abused does not mean it was created with evil intent.
Why isn't this illegal in every state? Maybe the story and the issue was targeted only to Washington State voters.
There is a saying that 90% of any advertising budget is wasted, but nobody knows which 90%.
For most businesses there is a simple correlation: No ads, no business. So don't ever expect fewer ads unless the 90% can be reduced.
And business plans do feature revenue targets.