{"id":1269,"date":"2016-10-28T23:46:45","date_gmt":"2016-10-28T23:46:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/facebook-draws-criticism-for-ethnic-affinity-ad-targeting.html"},"modified":"2016-10-28T23:46:45","modified_gmt":"2016-10-28T23:46:45","slug":"facebook-draws-criticism-for-ethnic-affinity-ad-targeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/facebook-draws-criticism-for-ethnic-affinity-ad-targeting.html","title":{"rendered":"Facebook draws criticism for \u2018ethnic affinity\u2019 ad targeting"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

ProPublica\u00a0pointed to some potentially problematic Facebook ad capabilities<\/a> today \u2014 specifically, the ability to include or exclude users from a given ad campaign based on their \u201cethnic affinity.\u201d<\/p>\n

These capabilities have existed for a while (Facebook told ProPublica\u2019s Julia Angwin and Terry Parris Jr. it began offering them within the past two years as part of its \u201cmulticultural advertising\u201d efforts), and to the advertisers who\u2019ve used them, they might seem like a natural extension of broader practices like targeting based on age, gender and location<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, Angwin and Parris noted that there are federal laws around housing and employment that prohibit\u00a0discriminatory advertising. In fact, they said that when they showed the ad-targeting options\u00a0to civil rights lawyer John Relman, he responded, \u201cThis is horrifying. This is massively illegal. This is about as blatant a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act as one can find.\u201d<\/p>\n

Facebook has responded with a blog post<\/a> from Christian Martinez, its head of multicultural. Martinez notes that ethnic affinity isn\u2019t based on your ethnicity, exactly, but rather whether your \u201clikes and other activity on Facebook suggest [you\u2019re] interested in content relating to particular ethnic communities\u201d \u2014 and that users can adjust their ad targeting preferences. (This might sound like a lawyerly distinction, but then, we are talking a potential legal issue.)<\/p>\n

Martinez also says this kind of targeting isn\u2019t a bad thing:<\/p>\n

\n

For example, a nonprofit that\u2019s hosting a career fair for the Hispanic community can use Facebook ads to reach people who have an interest in that community. And a merchant selling hair care products that are designed for black women can reach people who are most likely to want its products.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

As for the more discriminatory practices that this targeting could\u00a0enable, Martinez says:<\/p>\n

\n

Our ad policies strictly prohibit this kind of advertising, and it\u2019s against the law. If we learn of advertising on our platform that involves this kind of discrimination, we will take aggressive enforcement action. We also realize that, as a website, we often aren\u2019t in a position to know the details of an apartment rental or job application \u2014 and so we will also remove an ad from our platform if the government agency responsible for enforcing discrimination laws tells us that the ad reflects illegal discrimination.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

Featured Image: Jimmy Baikovicius<\/a>\/Flickr<\/a> UNDER A CC BY-SA 2.0<\/a> LICENSE<\/small><\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/ytpg7fBPVwY\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ProPublica\u00a0pointed to some potentially problematic Facebook ad capabilities today \u2014 specifically, the ability to include or exclude users from a given ad campaign based on their \u201cethnic affinity.\u201d These capabilities <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-1269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t