I have a question to pose to you or more something I want you to do before reading further in this blog. Go to a search engine like Google and enter your first and last name. What type of ads pop up once the search engine has completed it's search?
For me, my name returns the following ads:
Amazon.com for records by Rosemary Clooney
Plants or Nursery for a Rosemary bush in a drum container
Well, I came across an article in which shows that Googles Ad Sense might be biased. Think how surprised you would be to enter your name and see ads for arrest records or judgements or liens.
This happened for Latanya Sweeney. This googled her name and found ads for her suggesting she has an arrest record. She began to try other names and see what ads were returned. She tried African-American names and Caucasian names and found very different results.
Based on all the information these search engines and Internet advertising approaches there are, do you think that this is racial profiling or just a bad algorithm?
By: Rosemary Drum
Source: http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/online_advertisings_racism_mess/
I thought this was an interesting topic. I searched my name and the only thing I got was Facebook, linked in, blogs...etc with people having my name, I guess I don't have an interesting name. I personally don't think Google adds have built in racism, they just search what is most relevant; sometimes if people with your same name have been convicted, the public records are available and the crawl results show those individuals, which then show ads relevant to convicted people . That also happens when you have a name like "Jennifer Lopez" or "John Smith" then you would get celebrity news or information of an 1500's English explorer, which show adds of TMZ and or history book adds.
ReplyDeleteNot an interesting name could very well be a good thing. Thanks!
DeleteI cannot replicate this in Google. It might be because of my settings. When I did googled my name all I got was another person with the same name. I am a little embarrassed to admit it, but he is a lot more popular than I am . I am not even ranked in the search.
ReplyDeleteDoes this happen with other ethnic groups names? Was Google questioned about this? If so, how did they respond?
Google's response per the article: “AdWords does not conduct any racial profiling. We also have an ‘anti’ and violence policy which states that we will not allow ads that advocate against an organisation, person or group of people. It is up to individual advertisers to decide which keywords they want to choose to trigger their ads.”
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ReplyDeleteInteresting topic! But, I couldn’t replicate it in Google either. It’s known that internet companies such as Google serve you targeted ads on your web browsing history, web searches, and on everything you do online—so it wouldn’t surprise me if they tailor their ads based on user’s names. But hey, whether we like it or not, this is a cost of getting free service from these companies.
ReplyDeletebkassahu
I agree it is a consequence of putting our information out there. Thanks!
DeleteThis is very interesting article; I do not think internet advertisement is built in racism. I believe the information you are getting is based on your previous research or information about people who share the same name with you.
ReplyDeleteI don't think Internet ads have built in racism per se'. However, I think they target certain individuals based on certain factors. Advertising agencies have become more intelligent and are able to track things you look at and purchase, and overtime they can build a profile on a certain type of individual. In turn, they advertise certain things to that person that they think will catch their interest based on a certain criteria that the ad company has gained.
ReplyDeleteWow that was very interesting. I did exactly that. I went to google and typed in "Becky Long" and the ads that were shown were social networking sites, universities, photography sites, real estate, and an obituary. Even the pictures that showed up as a preview for what google images found under that same search were interesting. It showed 4 pictures: 1)a blonde woman, smiling, laughing with penguines in the background 2)two brunette white women having a glamour shot 3)a white baby, posed on a soft blanket, smiling and 4)head-shot of a white, blonde business woman smiling.
ReplyDeleteThen I searched the name given in the article and immediately recognized the difference. The ads were different as Rosemary described but even the four pictures were all of black women, 3 of which were mug shots.
I would love to find out why this is. I have no opinion on wither it is intentional racial profiling or not.