Are Google ads guilty of racial profiling?
OPINION - It may seem relatively harmless -- funny even -- when a white person gets the ad for a Lexus and a black person gets the ad for a used Toyota...
So how can Google address these concerns if they exist? According to Jim Edwards at bnet.com, the solution is simple:
While Google has millions of advertisers and cannot police the keywords they buy (because the system is automated), it could make them click affirmatively on a non-discrimination promise when they buy those ads. Any advertiser caught racially profiling customers could then be banned from the service. Problem solved.
As deceptively simple as that might sound, considering Adwords is Google’s main advertising product and primary source of revenue with total ad sales around $28 billion dollars last year, my guess is that there won’t be much policing happening anytime soon. Newman, however, would like to see even more done.
From his article:
With Google’s Chairman Eric Schmidt testifying before the Senate on Wednesday, I’m hoping the Senators will raise questions on what kinds of contextual and behavioral targeting Google allows in its advertising and what steps it has taken to stop racial and economic profiling that harms such groups. Given the billions of dollars Google made from subprime mortgage lenders advertising on its site and revenue raised from similarly shady advertisers such as the recent pharma ad scandal revealed, there are legitimate questions raised about Google making its advertising services available to unethical advertisers.
From a consumer standpoint, most of us would agree that Google’s search engine advances have made our lives easier, almost as if the Internet could read our minds and anticipate what we were thinking before we did. But that convenience should not come at the cost of allowing advertisers to use practices that continue to perpetuate stereotypes and discriminate against groups of people based on race or economic position.
It may seem relatively harmless — funny even — when a white person gets the ad for a Lexus and a black person gets the ad for a used Toyota. But when you start to consider the idea that some advertisers may be specifically targeting minorities for things like predatory lending, suddenly it’s no laughing matter.
Stephanie Humphrey is a Tech-Life Expert and blogger at ‘A Matter of Life and Tech’. You can follow her on twitter @TechLifeSteph.
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