Facebook To Stop Ads that Target, Exclude Races (usatoday.com) 143
An anonymous reader shares a USA Today report: Facebook says it will no longer allow advertisers to exclude specific racial and ethnic groups when placing ads related to housing, credit or employment. "We are going to turn off, actually prohibit, the use of ethnic affinity marketing for ads that we identify as offering housing, employment and credit," Erin Egan, Facebook's vice president of U.S. public policy, told USA TODAY. Facebook will also require advertisers to affirm that they will not place discriminatory ads on Facebook and will offer educational materials to help advertisers understand their obligations, Egan said. The policy changes came after discussions with Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Illinois) and the Congressional Black Caucus, and Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.) and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
Re:Question is... (Score:5, Informative)
Everything about you is their business. It's how they collect their money by selling your data on, or advertising to you based on what they perceive your needs or wants to be.
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That makes it legal and profitable. "Right" doesn't factor in.
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Why not? You're offering a service in exchange for something. You could always give the users the option to pay a monthly subscription fee in exchange for not being tracked. I'm sure a whole 0.0001% of users will take them up on that option too.
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Everything about you is their business.
Literally
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So the better question is what suit called the shot.
The one that acknowledged that there was an edge to be had by including these statistics in their advertising bias and somehow thought there would be no repercussions.
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Who needs to code it period?
for attribute in profile_attributes:
if target["attribute"]:
displayAd()
That way when your profile attributes change you don't have to re-write your ad tools.
Just those things? (Score:2, Insightful)
"...prohibit, the use of ethnic affinity marketing for ads that we identify as offering housing, employment and credit"
Why only those types of adverts? Why not just turn it off altogether?
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There are probably some cultural things that they see as being more likely relevant to certain races.
Such as: advertising a Kanye West event to white people or Garth Brooks to black people. Sure, some black people like Garth, and some whites like Kanye; but they're probably more likely to reach a receptive audience to those people by advertising to a certain race.
That said, I'd imagine most things they might want to advertise, race would be irrelevant.
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Good point but, Dude, that was a possible example.It was obvious enough to get, but neutral enough to rely on stereotypes. (He could have referred to the racial stereotype of the lazy black eating watermelon or something similar, less true but even more insulting than Kanye West)
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lol. I picked Kanye instead of, say Beyoncé, or Chaka Khan, because I thought he was more appropriate. I wasn't trying to be insulting.
Everyone loves Chaka Khan and Beyoncé is quite popular with all races too! Most white people I know think Kanye is a joke, I didn't realize black people would be offended to be associated with him too! Perhaps there is a better example I could have used. I fully admit to being completely ignorant of who is popular with whom in pop-culture these days.
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Most white people I know think Kanye is a joke, I didn't realize black people would be offended to be associated with him too!
Well, I would! But I'm neither black nor American, so...
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The cynic in me says you are right.... I could care less about some things such as Kanye West, but because they can't filter on race, they advertiser will have to pay for my page view.
1)make a rule where you can't filter by race ....
2)tell marketers they have to pay for useless renderings of their content
4)PROFIT!!
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If there are legal protections against using race as a criterion for employment, then how come Abraham Lincoln is portrayed by a black actor 0% of the time?
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Give it time. Not that you've seen 100% of theatrical portrayals of Lincoln, I'd suspect.
The Marvel Universe movies picked out the best actor they could for Nick Fury, despite the fact that Fury's backstory absolutely does not work with Jackson's race.
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Sure. However, I seem to remember a certain Sergeant Fury and the Howling Commandos - or something like that - nominally from WWII. That would not have happened at all had Fury been colored (to use the military terminology of the day).
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Abraham Lincoln has often been portrayed by blacks in school settings often.
But Abe is an actual historical figure (not a fictional one created in a highly racist environment where every character was white and minorities were basically invisible like Nick Fury) so most often a white actor who looks like photos of abe lincoln will be selected.
However, Romans (and Roman Ceasars) are often portrayed by British instead of italians. So it's certainly possible that in a few hundred years Lincoln might be portra
Re: Just those things? (Score:1)
I recently saw a professional production of Macbeth with a black actor in the role. Not unusual nowadays and no big deal. A good actor can transcend race and gender.
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It's a little harder with othello tho.
Re: Just those things? (Score:1)
It's ok as long as they don't black up.
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That was a bit appalling. It should just be makeup but you know, blackface has a terrible history so it's not just makeup.
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It's in areas where targeting advertising disadvantages certain races.
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Try marketing sunblock to a black man. "You need the level 20 sunblock for your skin".
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Why only those types of adverts? Why not just turn it off altogether?
Beauty products. It's quite likely that ladies with different skin colors want different beauty products.
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There are legitimate reasons you want to target particular groups of people.
Housing, Employment, and Credit are all flat out illegal.
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Here's an example: it costs you 10 cents per thousand hits. you are selling hair straightener to blacks. If you can limit your target to blacks, then your advertising will cost you 1.2 cents (because you won't be sending adds to 880 people who don't care about hair straightener).
That make sense?
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The real issue now is that fine granular ad consumer tracking and product placement.
English, Portuguese, French, Spanish within the Americas, Africa and much more fine demographics down to small region, parishes, districts.
Can they target political fanboyism? (Score:1)
Seriously, it's as though there is nothing else going on in some people's lives that they are constantly posting some political commentary. Guess what? Nobody asked for your opinion.
42 (Score:2)
Kyle Larson of Earnhardt Ganassi Racing [target.com] is going to be pissed.
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Wouldn't dreidels ALREADY be advertised mainly to white people?
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Jewish people ARE white. You don't see a "Jewish" option for race when filling in a document at the DMV. Most western Jews (and even Jewish people that moved back to the middle east) have much more European DNA than middle eastern DNA after their ancestors lived with (and consequently bred with) Europeans for many centuries.
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Bagels? Really? Bagels?
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I liked that one, and Burritos. White people NEVER eat burritos. Most white people look at a burrito and wonder what it is: is it food, is it a living animal? Why is it on a plate.
White people are going to be astonished to realize the burrito exists.
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White people NEVER eat burritos.
Yet they eat Hot Pockets, which are the same thing.
Besides, "never" is a strong word. Was MTV being unrealistic when it depicted Beavis and Butt-head seeking burritos in "The Great Cornholio"?
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I hope you realize I was being sarcastic.
However:
Hot Pocket is to Burritos what Velveeta is to real cheese.
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Just exclude? How about inclusion targeting? (Score:2)
What about advertisers that inclusively target specific racial and ethnic groups? For example, money transfer services to Mexican-Americans?
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What about advertisers that inclusively target specific racial and ethnic groups?
Or hair care products? Dark and Lovely [softsheen-carson.com]
Turn off (Score:2)
Does this imply that such a feature was actually available up until now? Who the thought that would ever be permissible?
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They're not disabling racial profiling for ads completely; only for housing and financial things. (things where there is more likely nefarious purposes for racial profiling rather than just finding the most appropriate demographic for an ad).
Re:Turn off (Score:4, Insightful)
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Is Facebook really expected to police the decisions of advertiser target selection? If we have laws and businesses are expected to know and follow the law then they are ones responsible for their ad choices. If we really carry the logic through, in that Facebook has a responsibility, then I'd ask why Facebook should even track race? Any time people are divided by race via algorithms the end result is always discrimination, sometimes benign, sometimes malicious, but knowing and categorizing people by race al
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And the admins aren't responsible, nor have oversight of, the content created and executed by the schmucks at the mouse?
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Donald (Score:1)
The Donald will make them start again!
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I doubt that 1-Term Donald alone has power to end the Fair Housing Act of 1968 [wikipedia.org] or the equal employment provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 [wikipedia.org]. Though the House and Senate will be Republican, Congress can't be too reactionary or they risk losing control at the end of the second year just as easily as they gained it in 1994.
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King George only had one term.
I suspect they can.
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George III was King of Great Britain and Ireland for a period equivalent to almost fifteen U.S. President terms. Are you claiming that the U.S. Constitution will be amended to give President-elect Trump a term an order of magnitude longer than that for which it presently provides?
Congress can't be too reactionary
I suspect they can.
At this point I doubt it. House Speaker Paul Ryan is reluctant to support a lot of what Mr. Trump stands for.
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I'm a pretty successful businessman. I didn't become a successful businessman by letting people tell me what to do. I became a successful businessman by getting things done...
Can you imagine him making a speech starting like that? I can. Can you imagine the people falling for it? They already have, so why not again?
systemic racism (Score:2)
I've long believed that even well-meaning groups and services that are explicitly established to help only people of a particular race or ethnicity are actually keeping racism going much more than eliminating the problem, and as such should be illegal. You either provide soup/scholarships/whatever equally for everyone that needs it or no-one.
Another example: All those government forms that ask your ethnicity... yes I know its optional to reply, but that shouldn't even be a question in the first place.
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Yes but you're talking about logical, predictable systems. That is not human nature.
Just look at groups like BLM. It should be more than obvious by now that "Affirmative action" is just a lame peecee excuse for more racism.
The only way to properly end the problem is to eliminate racism, not encourage more (in either direction).
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I think that the idea is to compensate for past racism.
Because two wrongs always makes a right
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If you are uneducated because you were a slave, then you won't be able to help your kids with their homework, so the first wrong (slavery) is making a different person suffer (the kid). Apply this recursively and the current beneficiaries are suffering the first wrong (just indirectly). The kid which is successful because his parents were not slaves had an unfair advantage (compared to the average kid) so the kid is not completely innocent.
You realize that means you're trying to right wrongs committed ~150 years ago. Talk about punishing the wrong people. Does this never end?
I'm curious though, what's your plan for helping the Chinese who built the railroads at approximately the same time? Or maybe you have a plan for the poor Irish who also built railroads at about the same time?
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How do white people not understand this?
Looking at this in terms of teams based on race is incorrect. While many rich people are white, most white people are not rich - a fact that seems lost on you. You should be looking at Team 1% and Team 99%. I am mixed on my politics but I am a huge fan of the phrase "we are the 99%". The 99% contains everyone. Even the left's punching bag white Christian male. My personal view is that to keep the 99% from actually recognizing that they are not getting a fair share team 1% fragment it by promoting disu
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I'm confused by your use of "punish" here.
If I give a step stool to short person to help them see over a wall I would consider that to be helping the short person, not punishing the tall person that happens to be standing next to them.
For situations where it's a zero sum game to give preferential treatment to one is to harm the other. Moreover the current implementation is not based on something logical, such as a short person getting a stool. It's based on averages for large groups. So it's more akin to giving a tall person a stool because he comes from a family that includes a lot of short people while the short person next to him is denied a stool because his family includes a lot of tall people. Thus the short person from a tall
NASCAR will never be the same (Score:3)
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Better yet, no English-speaking ads since they'd disproportionately target non-hispanics.
So no more trump stuff but pro H1B's is ok? (Score:2)
So no more trump stuff but pro H1B's is ok?
Better yet turn off all Facebook (Score:2)
Here's one way to turn off Facebook ads on any machine where you have root. If you've been around Slashdot for a while, you probably already know which file these entries go in [pineight.com].
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Really? (Score:3)
Wot? They are going to follow the law existing in most civilized countries already forbidding this?
And they want applause? A pat on the back?
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What laws prohibit a marketer from specifically targeting a particular demographic, even if it's a protected class?
What about tageting (reverse exclusion)? (Score:2)