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.

Comments

Re:This part makes no sense.

[Luthair]

I think the idea is that the man's click is more valuable since they're less likely to do it. Without reading the article (hey, its slashdot) logically this would actually favour women because the advertiser would get more impressions per dollar.

Also worth pointing out that this also existed before Facebook, advertisers chose which magazines to place ads in, for example Vanity Fair vs GQ.

Targeted Ads Discriminate?

[Jarwulf]

Targeting certain ads toward certain people targets (ie discriminates between) different people? Wow who knew.

Re:Targeted Ads Discriminate?

[ShanghaiBill]

Targeting certain ads toward certain people targets (ie discriminates between) different people? Wow who knew.

That is not what TFA is saying. It is saying even untargeted ads can be discriminatory.

Re:Targeted Ads Discriminate?

[Tranzistors]

You might want to read the friendly summary up to the very end. The researchers found that the discrimination is done by the algorithm itself. In previous stories about discriminatory advertisement it was implied that the advertisers probably put in some sort of “No Irish need apply” filter, the news here is that might not necessary be the case.

Re:This part makes no sense.

[Jarwulf]

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.

Re:This part makes no sense.

[Hognoxious]

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.

And???

[EvilSS]

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.

Re:And???

[grasshoppa]

Not quite.

The intent isn't simply to get your ad in front of as many eyeballs as possible. Down that path lay madness. It's about getting your ad in front of as many eyeballs as possible that are attached to disposable income.

That's why the 18-34 demographic is so coveted; They're more likely to have the cash to burn AND they are more likely to make emotional decisions ( although how true that is anymore is the subject of debate )

Re:And???

[EvilSS]

The intent isn't simply to get your ad in front of as many eyeballs as possible.

I never said that. I said they spend money to target an audience that's harder to target due to their habits. The older people get, the more likely it is they will be exposed to more ads each night, the cheaper it is to advertise to them.

It's about getting your ad in front of as many eyeballs as possible that are attached to disposable income.

Actually older demographics have more disposable income, not younger ones. This is why luxury items tend to be targeted to the middle aged crowd. 18-34 is so coveted because they are harder to get ads in front of and companies want to begin building their brands in those "new" consumer eyes. This is why, for example, beer companies target younger audiences. If you are 35, you probably already have a preferred brand. If you are a new drinker (let's pretend you're 21) you are still figuring that out. But to get those new drinkers, you have to get your banding and ads to them. That's harder to do since they don't sit at home watching TV from 6-10pm every night. So shows that attract them can command higher rates. Hell how do you think the CW stays in business? Their overall ratings are extremely low, but a lot of their shows skew younger than most other network shows. This allows for an opportunity for advertisers to target an audience that normally doesn't watch a lot of other broadcast network shows.

The descrimination is not theoretical

[Required Snark]

This is the part everyone is ignoring:

"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."

That is discriminatory and illegal. The researchers looked at lots of factors, including areas where targeting is acceptable practice. They wanted to know if Facebook was using their targeting algorithm where it should not be used. The answer seems to be that Facebook is breaking the law.

All the whining fools questioning the study are too stupid to read the summery and/or too dumb to understand it: typical Slashdot knuckle dragging idiots who still live in their parent's basement.

Re:The descrimination is not theoretical

[Kjella]

Could you elaborate how a generic targeting algorithm can "discriminate".

A generic ad optimization algorithm will create a bunch of proxy variables that effectively work like the non-discriminating factor, even if it's explicitly denied access to that variable. It's actually a lot harder to avoid than to do, basically treat every time you show an ad like an experiment. If you click the ad it counts for every property about you, if you don't click the ad it counts against every property about you. So you say it's not to discriminate on sex, the algorithm doesn't get your gender. But it'll pretty soon figure out whether people who are fans of Justin Bieber and a million other gender-skewed metrics respond to your ad or not.

It's absolutely feasible to build an algorithm that tries to find relevant candidates while respecting an imposed equality, for example that they draw from separate pools so you must have half male and half female ad impressions. But it gets pretty hard when you want for example a jobs ad that doesn't discriminate on ethnicity, like if the population is 50-30-15-5 percent something you want a 50-30-15-5 percent distribution. It gets really hard if you don't want to discriminate on religion, sexual orientation, political stance or something else where you don't actually have the underlying data but you're pretty sure your proxy variables are effectively filtering on that anyway.

If you're going to reply with "how's an algorithm that's only preserving the status quo or amplifying a feedback loop that's already there discriminatory" well if it was up to an algorithm an all-white school would stay all-white. After all there's never been a black person attending this school, so there's no reason to try to make a black kid apply. It's a feedback loop that'll keep bashing those unlikely to succeed because they're unlikely to succeed, even if they as individuals are doing everything they can. If you're constantly going to measured against what people "like you" do you'll never truly be in charge of your own destiny, which is kinda the essence of the American dream.

Or

[AHuxley]

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.

Re:This part makes no sense.

[Anubis IV]

I stand corrected. While I may not enjoy it, I always appreciate when someone calls me out, so I thank you for doing so.