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Facebook Ad Platform Could Be Inherently Discriminatory, Researchers Say (theregister.co.uk)
Researchers from Northeastern Unviersity, the University of Southern Carolina, and tech accountability non-profit Upturn have released a paper that says Facebook's ad delivery system itself can steer ads intended to be inclusive toward discrimination without explicit intent. "In a paper titled, 'Discrimination through optimization: How Facebook's ad delivery can lead to skewed outcomes,' co-authors Muhammad Ali, Piotr Sapiezynski, Miranda Bogen, Aleksandra Korolova, Alan Mislove, and Aaron Rieke find that advertiser budgets and ad content affect ad delivery, skewing it along gender and racial lines even when neutral ad targeting settings are used," reports The Register. From the report: The researchers found that Facebook ads tend to be shown to men because women tend to click on ads more often, making them more expensive to reach through Facebook's system. That divide becomes apparent when ad budgets are compared, because the ad budget affects ad distribution. As the paper explains, "the higher the daily budget, the smaller the fraction of men in the audience." Such segregation may be appropriate and desirable for certain types of marketing pitches, but when applied to credit, employment and housing ads, the consequences can be problematic.
Ad content -- text and images -- also has a strong effect on whether ads get shown to men or women, even when the bidding strategy is the same and gender-agnostic targeting is used. In particular, the researchers found images had a surprisingly large effect on ad delivery. Ad URL destination has some effect -- an ad pointing to a bodybuilding site and an ad pointing to a cosmetics site had a baseline delivery distribution of 48 percent men and 40 percent men respectively. The addition of a title and headline doesn't change that much. But once the researchers added an image to the ad, the distribution pattern changed, with the bodybuilding site ad reaching an audience that was 75 percent male and the cosmetics ad reaching an audience that was 90 percent female. According to the researchers, their tests suggest, "Facebook has an automated image classification mechanism in place that is used to steer different ads towards different subsets of the user population." "In terms of credit, employment and housing ads, the problem with this system is that it discriminates where it shouldn't: Five ads for lumber industry jobs were delivered to an audience that was more than 90 percent men and more than 70 percent white; five ads for janitorial work were delivered to an audience that was more than 65 percent women and 75 percent black," the report adds. "Housing ads also showed a racial skew."
The latest findings come after years of criticism of Facebook's ad system. Last month, Facebook announced changes to the platform intended to prevent advertisers from deploying unfair credit, employment and housing ads. One week later, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sued Facebook for violating the Fair Housing Act.
Ad content -- text and images -- also has a strong effect on whether ads get shown to men or women, even when the bidding strategy is the same and gender-agnostic targeting is used. In particular, the researchers found images had a surprisingly large effect on ad delivery. Ad URL destination has some effect -- an ad pointing to a bodybuilding site and an ad pointing to a cosmetics site had a baseline delivery distribution of 48 percent men and 40 percent men respectively. The addition of a title and headline doesn't change that much. But once the researchers added an image to the ad, the distribution pattern changed, with the bodybuilding site ad reaching an audience that was 75 percent male and the cosmetics ad reaching an audience that was 90 percent female. According to the researchers, their tests suggest, "Facebook has an automated image classification mechanism in place that is used to steer different ads towards different subsets of the user population." "In terms of credit, employment and housing ads, the problem with this system is that it discriminates where it shouldn't: Five ads for lumber industry jobs were delivered to an audience that was more than 90 percent men and more than 70 percent white; five ads for janitorial work were delivered to an audience that was more than 65 percent women and 75 percent black," the report adds. "Housing ads also showed a racial skew."
The latest findings come after years of criticism of Facebook's ad system. Last month, Facebook announced changes to the platform intended to prevent advertisers from deploying unfair credit, employment and housing ads. One week later, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development sued Facebook for violating the Fair Housing Act.
Targeting certain ads toward certain people targets (ie discriminates between) different people? Wow who knew.
Also, I love how its unfair discrimination to treat people differently based upon actual verified different behaviour. Its wrong to treat women different even if its directly due to them actually behaving differently.
Whoever chose to use the word discriminatory since that sort of implies it, doesn't it?
adjective: discriminatory
making or showing an unfair or prejudicial distinction between different categories of people or things, especially on the grounds of race, age, or sex.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
It's always been this way. Why do you think network ratings are based on age demographics? Companies spend more money to target younger audiences because guess what! Younger audiences watch less TV. It's to get ads in front of them so companies spend more money putting ads on shows that tend to attract younger audiences*. Older audiences watch more of it. At a certain point, they watch so much it's cheap and easy to reach their eyeballs.
Certain brands target certain ages, sexes, incomes, even races. Just because "the internet!" doesn't suddenly make this a new.
*Yes, yes, I know. No one under 50 watches network TV anymore, but this is how it has always worked and that's the point: it's not some new problem brought on by the face books.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
the ads have to work in the way the person paying for the ad wants.
Thats the service and that is their money to spend.
Why pay for and send out ads to people who will not want such ads?
Thats less ads for people who might be interested in the ads?
For that ability to really get the ads to a set of interest people filters, rules are needed.
Don't try and sell products to people who will not buy that brand, can't afford that brand, live in the wrong area to use that brand.
Say a smaller company has a few vans and a set range of service from a central location.
One person has a van and wants to sell a service to a range of people within set distances.
All kinds of different math goes into the reasons why service and product exists and will not exist all over a city, state, nation.
The other problem is what is a person doing to make an ad show?
Using social media/the internet to look up news, gossip, fun, games, cosmetics, cars, trucks, vans, holidays, banking services, a new home?
Only one ad can be displayed at a price point any one time so make sure that ad will get a persons interest and attention.
All data, past use, profile and what is ad is paying for is considered.
What will sell to that person in that hour, moment in time?
No past history due to blocking, a new account? Some ads can be set to display. Some ads want more user info before they can be placed.
Nobody wants to spend their ad budget balancing out average user counts to virtue signal.
They want every ad they pay for to get seen by a set of people they know might buy a product.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"