Facebook explains that it is totally not doing racial profiling

It just wants to assign you an "ethnic affinity" based on what you do and like.

Read the whole story

 

[fcx56]

LuDux[/url]":b2o528p2]

Velma Velvet[/url]":b2o528p2]It's just targeted advertising to a demographic. Why is that a big deal. Companies want to sell stuff. If black people or Hispanic people buy different stuff than white people then they'll do what it takes to sell it to them. It isn't racism. It's greed.

Yes.

Except you don't get to decide if you, yourself, are black, white, Mexican, Asian, Russian, or whatever.

Facebook decides that /for/ you.

Genuinely curious: Is that normally a personal decision? How did that work out for Rachel Dolezal?

Edit: ninja'd by Galeran

 

[enilc]

renny[/url]":29mb3wua]
Racial profiling by police is bad, because they assume "you are black" equals "you are thug".

Facebook's profiling would lead to an assumption like "you are doing thug things, so you are a thug".

Correctly worded: "you are doing thug things, so you are a thug here are some other thug-related items you might like to buy".

 

[Blue Adept]

Does this even really matter? It's just advertising, which has had racially targeted ads since it was created. If you like targeted ads, you might even want ethnically targeted advertisements.

Now, if this was that semi-real network Peeple where you got to vote on the quality of people, I'd be a lot more concerned.

 

[somini]

renny[/url]":mom83kn9]

Fatesrider[/url]":mom83kn9]The difference between profiling "activities" and racial profiling appears to be little more than differences in intended methodology here since the end result in what happens due to that "action profiling" is the same: Different races/ethnicities are treated differently.

Racial profiling by police is bad, because they assume "you are black" equals "you are thug".

Facebook's profiling would lead to an assumption like "you are doing thug things, so you are a thug".

Our privacy is being lost for no good reason. Ads don't HAVE to rely on what we do. And these kinds of justifications further erode our privacy. After all, this data is FOR SALE TO ANYONE.

That's the thing people get wrong all the time: Facebook (or Google) don't sell your data to anyone. It's the most precious thing they have, they won't give it away.

An advertiser can say "Deliver this ad to Star Trek nerds" and I might see it. But they can't ask Facebook "That renny feller, is he a Star Trek nerd?"

Of course, when you choose dozens of "characteristics", the pool of potential targets gets into ridiculously small numbers.
There was an experiment somewhere that did just that, targeted a Facebook ad at a single person.

 

[DiavoJinx]

This is literally racial profiling.

Facebook is assigning a race, stepping around the term thanks to their lawyers by labeling it "ethnic affinity", to your profile in their database.

All the word play and the "Oh no it's totally not, it's actually..." from the PR team is tap dancing around it.
I picture Richard Gere's Billy Flynn from Chicago (2002) singing his "Razzle Dazzle 'em" song with respect to this.

 

[Mitlov]

All of this could be avoided by simply not using the term "ethnic affinity." Don't say that Eminem has an African-American ethnic affinity and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks an African-American ethnic affinity, which is at best weird and at worst offensive. Simply say that Eminem has a "hip-hop affinity" and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks a "hip-hop affinity." Does anybody object to that latter distinction? I doubt it.

 

[TK]

greatn[/url]":1m8kap3w]I'd like to see an experiment where a company gave a user the opposite of targeted ads, the kind they would never see based on their profile.

We did that for the better part of the 90's, before behavioral targeting was a thing.

Turns out, showing ads for breast enlargement to men and penis enlargement to women is a waste of time and money for all concerned.

 

[eric123]

Mitlov[/url]":1pzesz3w]All of this could be avoided by simply not using the term "ethnic affinity." Don't say that Eminem has an African-American ethnic affinity and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks an African-American ethnic affinity, which is at best weird and at worst offensive. Simply say that Eminem has a "hip-hop affinity" and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks a "hip-hop affinity." Does anybody object to that latter distinction? I doubt it.

you can do that but its too specific. Facebook is talking to people who want to place a great variety of ads.
they want advertisers in general to know how they can help them, not just specific for specific products.

 

[enilc]

If someone has a pretty solid...let's say African-American...'ethnic affinity' and receives targeted advertising, and then that person suddenly starts friending and getting friended by non-African-Americans and then more and more of such friends, and then his advertising starts shifting...

Would that be facebook gentrification?

 

[reckless76]

greatn[/url]":1f268x4t]I'd like to see an experiment where a company gave a user the opposite of targeted ads, the kind they would never see based on their profile. Perhaps people would actually be interested in stuff they didn't have much exposure to, and perhaps sometimes targeted ads are white noise or redundant. Eugene Mirman has done some good routines on his experiments with this where he has bought weird ads on Facebook and targeted them to nonsensical demographics to see how much and what kind of traffic he generated.

To add my anecdote to this, any targeted add that makes it to my eyeballs seems to be for something I considered recently and rejected, or already bought. So I definitely agree that targeted adds tend towards redundant. They really should try something different.

 

[jdale]

DoomHamster[/url]":3bfppyjc]Their mistake was bringing the word "ethnic" into it. Their mistake was trying to link interests with ethnicity. If they had just left it as interest profiling and serve up targeted content based on those interests, then nobody would care.

Edit: clarification of my point.

That would work internally, but they are trying to sell a product and that requires marketing the product. The product is "access to specific demographics" and the target audience is "marketers". So, the product they are selling needs to be understandable to marketers. "Ethnic affinity" is perfectly clear to marketers, it means "race" with the caveat that they aren't guaranteeing race, it's only inferred. If they called it "interest profiling", marketers wouldn't see the value-add over what Facebook has been doing previously.

The marketers in turn are selling their own products based on their own preconceptions about the target audience. The marketers can also link Facebook's assumptions about your "Ethnic affinity" to your identity if you follow the link and make any purchase, provide any data, or even merely revisit a site where you have previously done so.

And it's not necessarily just selling NWA to blacks and Dr. Dre to whites. It's also reinforcing brand identity if one brand wants a black image and another one wants a white one. It could also involve differential pricing, e.g. if the ads presented to one group come with discounts and to the other does not.

 

[Mitlov]

eric123[/url]":2vj40t6k]

Mitlov[/url]":2vj40t6k]All of this could be avoided by simply not using the term "ethnic affinity." Don't say that Eminem has an African-American ethnic affinity and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks an African-American ethnic affinity, which is at best weird and at worst offensive. Simply say that Eminem has a "hip-hop affinity" and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks a "hip-hop affinity." Does anybody object to that latter distinction? I doubt it.

you can do that but its too specific. Facebook is talking to people who want to place a great variety of ads.
they want advertisers in general to know how they can help them, not just specific for specific products.

I think "hip-hop culture" affects not just music preferences, but everything from movie preferences (yes to Tyler Perry, no to Ang Lee) to clothing (yes to FUBU, no to REI or Banana Republic) to automotive choices (yes to Chrysler 300C and Escalade; no to Prius and Tesla). Or you could have the "basic" affinity, which will let an advertiser know that the individual is part of the clique that likes Starbucks, yoga pants, scarves, Ugg boots, Coldplay, etc. Demographic categories based on cultural cliques like that would be probably more useful to advertisers than "Asian affinity" and "African-American affinity" and " white affinity" (or whatever they call the last one) and, to boot, wouldn't offend anyone.

 

[eric123]

Mitlov[/url]":3qvp7b4z]

eric123[/url]":3qvp7b4z]

Mitlov[/url]":3qvp7b4z]All of this could be avoided by simply not using the term "ethnic affinity." Don't say that Eminem has an African-American ethnic affinity and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks an African-American ethnic affinity, which is at best weird and at worst offensive. Simply say that Eminem has a "hip-hop affinity" and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks a "hip-hop affinity." Does anybody object to that latter distinction? I doubt it.

you can do that but its too specific. Facebook is talking to people who want to place a great variety of ads.
they want advertisers in general to know how they can help them, not just specific for specific products.

I think "hip-hop culture" affects not just music preferences, but everything from movie preferences (yes to Tyler Perry, no to Ang Lee) to clothing (yes to FUBU, no to REI or Banana Republic) to automotive choices (yes to Chrysler 300C and Escalade; no to Prius and Tesla). Or you could have the "basic" affinity, which will let an advertiser know that the individual is part of the clique that likes Starbucks, yoga pants, scarves, Ugg boots, Coldplay, etc. Demographic categories based on cultural cliques like that would be probably more useful to advertisers than "Asian affinity" and "African-American affinity" and " white affinity" (or whatever they call the last one) and, to boot, wouldn't offend anyone.

with your idea the list never ends and becomes indecisive.

a year, a month down the line a company comes up with a new term to describe their market and Facebook has to take stabs at how to collect data for that new demo.

 

[renny]

somini[/url]":2uuq5enc]Of course, when you choose dozens of "characteristics", the pool of potential targets gets into ridiculously small numbers.
There was an experiment somewhere that did just that, targeted a Facebook ad at a single person.

So?

The advertisers don't get a list of people who fit their dozens of "characteristics".

Where's the nefarious thing here?

 

[jdale]

renny[/url]":16fje423]

somini[/url]":16fje423]Of course, when you choose dozens of "characteristics", the pool of potential targets gets into ridiculously small numbers.
There was an experiment somewhere that did just that, targeted a Facebook ad at a single person.

So?

The advertisers don't get a list of people who fit their dozens of "characteristics".

Where's the nefarious thing here?

Suppose a clothing company doesn't want blacks wearing its clothes because it's worried blacks will make their clothes look urban and lower class. Black people don't fit their "brand identity." Facebook permits them to market to white people. Otherwise they would have to market to many smaller subdemographics (e.g. country music fans) to achieve the same goal.

 

[Trivial23]

Eh, seems ok to me. I guarantee you facebook couldn't guess my race given my interested aren't inline with my ethnic group. And targetted ads aren't exactly new. As much as I don't care for ads I'd rather see ones relevent to my interest.

 

[Deleted member 1]

Seems like another case of "Let's make something out of nothing." People do actually have ethnic and cultural preferences and that isn't a bad thing.

 

[Mitlov]

eric123[/url]":34x4p5zr]

Mitlov[/url]":34x4p5zr]

eric123[/url]":34x4p5zr]

Mitlov[/url]":34x4p5zr]All of this could be avoided by simply not using the term "ethnic affinity." Don't say that Eminem has an African-American ethnic affinity and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks an African-American ethnic affinity, which is at best weird and at worst offensive. Simply say that Eminem has a "hip-hop affinity" and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks a "hip-hop affinity." Does anybody object to that latter distinction? I doubt it.

you can do that but its too specific. Facebook is talking to people who want to place a great variety of ads.
they want advertisers in general to know how they can help them, not just specific for specific products.

I think "hip-hop culture" affects not just music preferences, but everything from movie preferences (yes to Tyler Perry, no to Ang Lee) to clothing (yes to FUBU, no to REI or Banana Republic) to automotive choices (yes to Chrysler 300C and Escalade; no to Prius and Tesla). Or you could have the "basic" affinity, which will let an advertiser know that the individual is part of the clique that likes Starbucks, yoga pants, scarves, Ugg boots, Coldplay, etc. Demographic categories based on cultural cliques like that would be probably more useful to advertisers than "Asian affinity" and "African-American affinity" and " white affinity" (or whatever they call the last one) and, to boot, wouldn't offend anyone.

with your idea the list never ends and becomes indecisive.

a year, a month down the line a company comes up with a new term to describe their market and Facebook has to take stabs at how to collect data for that new demo.

Do you think that "African-American affinity" is a fixed, never-changing set of characteristics? How about "Asian affinity"? If not, that's a problem they're going to have to address regardless.

 

[omniron]

Mitlov[/url]":1svkts37]All of this could be avoided by simply not using the term "ethnic affinity." Don't say that Eminem has an African-American ethnic affinity and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks an African-American ethnic affinity, which is at best weird and at worst offensive. Simply say that Eminem has a "hip-hop affinity" and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks a "hip-hop affinity." Does anybody object to that latter distinction? I doubt it.

If they're tailoring the content based on social conceptions of racial stereotypes, they should just be straight-forward about this, it looks worse when they try and conceal it behind obviously sanitized marketing words.

But I think this is the difficulty with what Facebook is doing. They're trying to segment people by social conceptions of race, which has the effect of reinforcing stereotypes.

The example posted in the first article: "white people" see an ad for NWA that depicts black gang violence, while "black people" see an ad about a story of how someone overcame gang violence and poverty. Filtering algorithms that can decipher social constructs of race aren't inherently bad, but this is an unethical use of these types of algorithms. This usage hurts society by reinforcing negative stereotypes, it makes it harder for us to use a shared context when trying to communicate (which is probably the biggest problem with social media-- it's hard to understand someone's context via text).

I think where facebook went wrong is trying to create algorithms that fit antiquated views on "race", they should have just went with a purely behavioral approach from the ground up, told any advertisers looking for "racial targeting" that they need a new approach.

 

[DoomHamster]

Fatesrider[/url]":33zvtc1m]

DoomHamster[/url]":33zvtc1m]Their mistake was bringing the word "ethnic" into it. Their mistake was trying to link interests with ethnicity. If they had just left it as interest profiling and serve up targeted content based on those interests, then nobody would care.

Edit: clarification of my point.

While you make a good point, isn't it still semantics?

Applying the above-mentioned metric to, say, law enforcement, wouldn't you be doing exactly the same thing as "racial profiling" in action, if not intent? After all, the social actions/interests of different races are almost always DIFFERENT. The term "stereotyping" could be applied.

I mean Eminem's Facebook "activities" might end up with him getting targeted ads for hair care products for Blacks, but that's because his "activities" are more in line with activities associated with Black stereotypes (a presumption here on my part and used as a potential example of misapplying directed ads based on "activities").

The difference between profiling "activities" and racial profiling appears to be little more than differences in intended methodology here since the end result in what happens due to that "action profiling" is the same: Different races/ethnicities are treated differently. In the case of Facebook, that's admittedly little more than business as usual. But the way it's been brought out raises troubling issues elsewhere.

THAT it happens at all is concerning to me because it could potentially lead to LEO's using the same justification to use racial profiling, only with a "kinder, gentler" methodology or stated (if not meant to be) intent.

IMHO, directed ads only undermines the privacy of the individual with little real benefit to the undermined individual. At some point the balance between the two will collapse (if it hasn't already) and will completely destroy any pretense to privacy the individual may have thought they had.

After all, back in the day, ads came as what they were. They may not have had as much "bang for the buck" and been wildly inappropriate for whoever may have been watching, but if anything has epitomized the warning behind the phrase, "Just because you CAN, doesn't mean you SHOULD" better than personalized, targeted ads based on data collected about you by your online "activities", I can't think of it at the moment.

Our privacy is being lost for no good reason. Ads don't HAVE to rely on what we do. And these kinds of justifications further erode our privacy. After all, this data is FOR SALE TO ANYONE. Even the government.

And that's probably the most concerning thing of all.

The short answer is "Yes, it is all semantics" since the terms "Race" and "Ethnicity" are entirely manufactured groupings of physical/cultural traits whose precise definitions can actually vary based upon whom you ask.

Since these definitions are so imprecise and since their usage has become so emotionally charged, why fall into the trap of using them in the first place?

 

[DoomHamster]

jdale[/url]":1jb51g12]

DoomHamster[/url]":1jb51g12]Their mistake was bringing the word "ethnic" into it. Their mistake was trying to link interests with ethnicity. If they had just left it as interest profiling and serve up targeted content based on those interests, then nobody would care.

Edit: clarification of my point.

That would work internally, but they are trying to sell a product and that requires marketing the product. The product is "access to specific demographics" and the target audience is "marketers". So, the product they are selling needs to be understandable to marketers. "Ethnic affinity" is perfectly clear to marketers, it means "race" with the caveat that they aren't guaranteeing race, it's only inferred. If they called it "interest profiling", marketers wouldn't see the value-add over what Facebook has been doing previously.

The marketers in turn are selling their own products based on their own preconceptions about the target audience. The marketers can also link Facebook's assumptions about your "Ethnic affinity" to your identity if you follow the link and make any purchase, provide any data, or even merely revisit a site where you have previously done so.

And it's not necessarily just selling NWA to blacks and Dr. Dre to whites. It's also reinforcing brand identity if one brand wants a black image and another one wants a white one. It could also involve differential pricing, e.g. if the ads presented to one group come with discounts and to the other does not.

Well, I'm no marketer but that just seems like a very narrow system of classification. Why pigeonhole yourself to serving content based off of some vaguely defined silo of criteria called "ethnicity" or "race" when the big data allows you to make much more granular decisions about what an individual may or may not respond to?

 

[eric123]

Mitlov[/url]":ws7oox6v]

eric123[/url]":ws7oox6v]

Mitlov[/url]":ws7oox6v]

eric123[/url]":ws7oox6v]

Mitlov[/url]":ws7oox6v]All of this could be avoided by simply not using the term "ethnic affinity." Don't say that Eminem has an African-American ethnic affinity and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks an African-American ethnic affinity, which is at best weird and at worst offensive. Simply say that Eminem has a "hip-hop affinity" and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks a "hip-hop affinity." Does anybody object to that latter distinction? I doubt it.

you can do that but its too specific. Facebook is talking to people who want to place a great variety of ads.
they want advertisers in general to know how they can help them, not just specific for specific products.

I think "hip-hop culture" affects not just music preferences, but everything from movie preferences (yes to Tyler Perry, no to Ang Lee) to clothing (yes to FUBU, no to REI or Banana Republic) to automotive choices (yes to Chrysler 300C and Escalade; no to Prius and Tesla). Or you could have the "basic" affinity, which will let an advertiser know that the individual is part of the clique that likes Starbucks, yoga pants, scarves, Ugg boots, Coldplay, etc. Demographic categories based on cultural cliques like that would be probably more useful to advertisers than "Asian affinity" and "African-American affinity" and " white affinity" (or whatever they call the last one) and, to boot, wouldn't offend anyone.

with your idea the list never ends and becomes indecisive.

a year, a month down the line a company comes up with a new term to describe their market and Facebook has to take stabs at how to collect data for that new demo.

Do you think that "African-American affinity" is a fixed, never-changing set of characteristics? How about "Asian affinity"? If not, that's a problem they're going to have to address regardless.

we talking about genetics? i guess it can change over time. slower moving target than a popular music genre or marketing lingo though.

if were talking social constructs, those two may change over time but it's also a slower process.

most change can be handled by what advertisers bring to the table, not Facebook.

 

[dEwMe]

DoomHamster[/url]":35wuqjs3]Their mistake was bringing the word "ethnic" into it. Their mistake was trying to link interests with ethnicity. If they had just left it as interest profiling and serve up targeted content based on those interests, then nobody would care.

Edit: clarification of my point.

Agreed, Even if you want to call something a black or white trait in your head you should name the profile something completely unrelated. So profile 5 likes gangster rap. That can't offend anyone right?

 

[strangeland]

DoomHamster[/url]":typ0h0cn]Their mistake was bringing the word "ethnic" into it. Their mistake was trying to link interests with ethnicity. If they had just left it as interest profiling and serve up targeted content based on those interests, then nobody would care.

Edit: clarification of my point.

But what if there is a link between other interests and ethnic interests? Discovering a correlation is racist?

Isn't it racist to assume a person's ethnic interest *is* their ethnicity, which seems to be the assumption most responses here are jumping to.

Edit: Also clarity.

 

[noanoxan]

Racists.

But then, I already knew that.

 

[perrosdelaguerra]

renny[/url]":kmvpz8m9]An advertiser can say "Deliver this ad to Star Trek nerds" and I might see it. But they can't ask Facebook "That renny feller, is he a Star Trek nerd?"

Advertisers know which ad you responded to, and the site it was served to, so they will "close the loop" and figure out that you are a Star Trek nerd when you click on the ad. Then, depending on how much information you give them (cookies, beacons, forms, email address, etc.), you will likely get your very own record in their prospect database and the budget for marketing to you will come from a different pile of money.

Disclosure: yes, I work in advertising.

 

[0bliv!on]

I hate Facebook with some vengeance, but I have to say - there's nothing wrong with this. They're not making conclusions about your RACE, they honestly don't care, and nor do advertisers.

They're making correlations between your posts and comments, and the target demographic of advertisers. That the factors being taken into account ALSO correlate with race is coincidental. The white girl who speaks like someone who likes black culture is just as likely to buy products targeted at people who enjoy black culture as a black person - and both Facebook and advertisers care about this and only this.

omniron[/url]":11zuch3k]

Mitlov[/url]":11zuch3k]All of this could be avoided by simply not using the term "ethnic affinity." Don't say that Eminem has an African-American ethnic affinity and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks an African-American ethnic affinity, which is at best weird and at worst offensive. Simply say that Eminem has a "hip-hop affinity" and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks a "hip-hop affinity." Does anybody object to that latter distinction? I doubt it.

If they're tailoring the content based on social conceptions of racial stereotypes, they should just be straight-forward about this, it looks worse when they try and conceal it behind obviously sanitized marketing words.

That's exactly it - they're NOT using racial stereotypes.

That would be:

"Person A likes X Y and Z --> They're likely Ethnicity B --> Ethnicity B people likes Product C --> Market Product C to Person A".

But that's an utterly unnecessary detour and works AGAINST both the interests of Advertisers and Facebook. What's actually happening is:

"Person A likes X Y and Z --> Product C is targeted at people who like X Y and Z --> Market Product C to Person A".

That's it.

What's causing the confusion is that both "X Y and Z" and "Product C" are correlated with an ethnicity, so the end results look very very similar. But the second method is both more direct, and more accurate, and requires less work. There's no reason for Facebook and advertisers to choose racial profiling, when you can directly use a person's interests to market products.

 

[perrosdelaguerra]

Mitlov[/url]":3q5s63xv]All of this could be avoided by simply not using the term "ethnic affinity." Don't say that Eminem has an African-American ethnic affinity and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks an African-American ethnic affinity, which is at best weird and at worst offensive. Simply say that Eminem has a "hip-hop affinity" and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks a "hip-hop affinity." Does anybody object to that latter distinction? I doubt it.

This is true, but I'd be willing to bet the reason they didn't go 100% race-neutral is advertisers need to be educated as to what they're buying. They're used to seeing demographics based on age, race, income, education level, etc., not audience categories sliced and diced according to their actual activities.

"Hip-hop" is a musical category first and a broader subculture second. An advertiser might look at that label and assume it wouldn't reach the full audience she or he wants to target.

So, I think it's a necessary half-step in the right direction. If it proves to be more effective in the long run, maybe we'll get advertising categories that are 100% race-neutral in the near future. Also, maybe discussions like this on why we even need to mention race when talking about advertising audiences will also help move the needle a little faster.

 

[joshv]

"Performative Identity" - yeah, they are good at this - continually showing me ads for the products I just bought.

Other than that there doesn't seem to be much advertising targeted at "40 something heterosexual white guy". Maybe my interests are boring - but come on, can't I just get a mini-van ad or two?

 

[DoomHamster]

strangeland[/url]":3p66gk5p]

DoomHamster[/url]":3p66gk5p]Their mistake was bringing the word "ethnic" into it. Their mistake was trying to link interests with ethnicity. If they had just left it as interest profiling and serve up targeted content based on those interests, then nobody would care.

Edit: clarification of my point.

But what if there is a link between other interests and ethnic interests? Discovering a correlation is racist?

Isn't it racist to assume a person's ethnic interest *is* their ethnicity, which seems to be the assumption most responses here are jumping to.

Edit: Also clarity.

I don't think anything should be assumed about race/ethnicity at all because they are very fuzzy constructed definitions.

I think where people get emotional is both in what defines a particular ethnicity and then, even if you settle on what a particular ethnicity is, people don't like the assumption that just because they fall into some pre-defined group, that they have all of the interests and traits of that group.

My point is that since ethnicity and race are so murky and emotional and since we have the ability to break an individual's interests down much more granularly, why even bother with race/ethnicity at all?

If person 'A' shows sustained interest in activity 'X', show adds targeted at activity 'X'. No need to group people artificially at all.

 

[eric123]

perrosdelaguerra[/url]":8heja9ny]

Mitlov[/url]":8heja9ny]All of this could be avoided by simply not using the term "ethnic affinity." Don't say that Eminem has an African-American ethnic affinity and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks an African-American ethnic affinity, which is at best weird and at worst offensive. Simply say that Eminem has a "hip-hop affinity" and Neil deGrasse Tyson lacks a "hip-hop affinity." Does anybody object to that latter distinction? I doubt it.

This is true, but I'd be willing to bet the reason they didn't go 100% race-neutral is advertisers need to be educated as to what they're buying. They're used to seeing demographics based on age, race, income, education level, etc., not audience categories sliced and diced according to their actual activities.

"Hip-hop" is a musical category first and a broader subculture second. An advertiser might look at that label and assume it wouldn't reach the full audience she or he wants to target.

So, I think it's a necessary half-step in the right direction. If it proves to be more effective in the long run, maybe we'll get advertising categories that are 100% race-neutral in the near future. Also, maybe discussions like this on why we even need to mention race when talking about advertising audiences will also help move the needle a little faster.

races are not a bad thing nor are they something to be avoided. discrimination is a bad thing.

 

[perrosdelaguerra]

joshv[/url]":2akwy8m8]"Performative Identity" - yeah, they are good at this - continually showing me ads for the products I just bought.

Their algorithms take time to process, plus, half of the equation is getting an advertiser to pay to show an ad to your demographic.

Case in point: my neighbor's house was broken into. I started asking around on Facebook about people's experiences with burglar alarms. Within a week or so, I saw a FB ad for a burglar alarm my friend had "liked." I didn't click on that ad, but went to the site and ultimately ended up buying the product.*

So, it does work...and it works better than hoping to get lucky showing me random ads. That's why they do it.

* Last I heard, FB was working on a way to correlate and get credit for these types of clicks, too. So you don't have to click on the exact ad for them to know they showed you an ad and it drove you to the advertiser's website.

joshv[/url]":2akwy8m8]Other than that there doesn't seem to be much advertising targeted at "40 something heterosexual white guy". Maybe my interests are boring - but come on, can't I just get a mini-van ad or two?

Um, in case you're serious, "40-something heterosexual white guy" is not "boring," but it probably represents one of the larger demographics in the US. So, there's a good chance that every ad that doesn't specifically target someone else is targeting that demographic.

 

[perrosdelaguerra]

eric123[/url]":2w01r8zg]
races are not a bad thing nor are they something to be avoided. discrimination is a bad thing.

So is prejudice. But that's not the point. I think using race-neutral language to describe something that is based on behaviors, not the color of one's skin, is a good thing. It is almost the capitalism version of MLK's dream speech, where people are judged by advertisers by the content of their characters, not the color of their skin.

 

[Azethoth666]

DoomHamster[/url]":3uq5xri4]Their mistake was bringing the word "ethnic" into it. Their mistake was trying to link interests with ethnicity. If they had just left it as interest profiling and serve up targeted content based on those interests, then nobody would care.

Edit: clarification of my point.

This is advertising. All kinds of groupings are interesting to advertisers. Pretending that ethnicity is not one of them is dumb. Pretending that the needs of advertisers makes them racist is beyond dumb. There are actual products that only make sense for particular ethnicities. For instance I need enhanced SPF levels in a sunblock. I do not begrudge anyone trying to target me specifically. In fact, I really enjoy that giant LG OLED tv ad because Ima get me one soon.

Please explain how advertisers using ethnic profiling to target ads is racist before we freak out about it.

 

[graylshaped]

Onyx Spartan II[/url]":127757lk]

graylshaped[/url]":127757lk]"It just wants to assign you an "ethnic affinity" based on what you do and like"

If this is to target us better, why not just serve us up stuff based on what we do and like?

Well, that's exactly what's happening. Facebook just made the mistake of presenting it with the "ethnic" grouping.

If, by "presenting it," you mean "applying a label," then we're in agreement. The way you phrase it, if you'll pardon the expression, whitewashes what they are doing.

 

[Marlor_AU]

This is really a logical consequence of "big data". Clustering algorithms are naturally going to end up creating sets that look a lot like ethnic groups.

A couple of years ago, one of the largest supermarkets in Australia launched a discount car insurance subsidiary. The idea was that they would use big data analysis to work out which individuals were low risk by correlating shopping habits with incidence of car accidents (using their supermarket loyalty cards for data). They would then offer insurance only to the low-risk groups.

In an interview, the group's Director stated:
"Customers who drink lots of milk and eat lots of red meat are very, very good car insurance risks versus those who eat lots of pasta and rice".

Social media wasn't very happy at all. They really seemed to be saying that Anglo-Australians with their meat-and-potatoes shopping habits were less of a risk than Asian-Australians and Mediterranean-Australians with their "exotic" rice and pasta. It seemed like racial profiling by stealth.

They've since downplayed the profiling aspect of their insurance offering, but I'm sure it is still occurring.

This brings up an interesting situation. It is illegal to charge more for insurance, or to deny insurance, to a particular group based on ethnicity. However, if you use big data to create a proxy for that ethnicity through shopping habits, then that is perfectly legal to use that proxy as a basis to deny people insurance.

I'm sure we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg with this, but it's going to become a larger issue in the future as systems automatically start clustering people into risk-based sets that look an awful lot like ethnic groups or social classes.

 

[Velma Velvet]

LuDux[/url]":2cs73hyr]

renny[/url]":2cs73hyr]

Velma Velvet[/url]":2cs73hyr]It's just targeted advertising to a demographic. Why is that a big deal. Companies want to sell stuff. If black people or Hispanic people buy different stuff than white people then they'll do what it takes to sell it to them. It isn't racism. It's greed.

In Facebook's case, it's not just that "It isn't racism. It's greed."

It isn't racism, because they aren't profiling immutable birth traits but behavior.
It's like Youtube's personalized homepage that has been offering me Beyoncé videos because I tried to find one song last week and clicked through 20-odd vids before I found it. Now Youtube's incredibly sophisticated algorithm thinks I love Beyoncé.
Do I throw a hissy-fit about it? No.

What you seem to be willfully missing is that they're trying to tie behaviour to ethnicity.

So I'm gonna guess by the behaviour indicated in your post that your ethnicity is French-Mongolian.

Don't quit your day job.

 

[IntergalacticWalrus]

Facebook makes money through profiling its users. If they weren't doing any ethnic profiling, they wouldn't be doing their profiling well enough. Not sure why people are so shocked to hear about this. Do people really expect any ethical behaviour to come out of this business model? So naive. The world of advertising is inherently gross.

 

[Howitzer86]

"So yeah, you're black right? Hey, here's some Air Jordans. How about some Nikes? Remember FuBu? They're still around. You do like these don't you? I've got some rap albums here too. Just click this button and I'll take you right to it."

Cringe...

 

[Eldorito]

But Facebook insists—correctly—that the process is a lot more complicated and nuanced than that. The company actually has a fairly sophisticated notion of ethnic identity: they would not market something like the NWA biopic Straight Outta Compton to everyone Facebook has identified as part of the African-American affinity group. Instead, they would look for people who also like rap music or who have shown an interest in NWA. The company is very aware that just because someone is African-American does not necessarily mean they will like rap. Likewise, just because someone is Asian American doesn't mean they like anime or Master of None.

In academic terms, Facebook is describing the difference between "essentialist identity" and "performative identity." An essentialist approach to target marketing would assume that anyone who is African-American will have certain core traits that are shared among all African-Americans. The performative approach suggests that people are a collection of actions and that what you do every day says more about who you are than whether you have dark skin or were born in Taiwan. Facebook is marketing to the way you perform your identity on its social network, not the box you check on the census under "race."

Very simple question - why does your "performative identity" matter and not just the fact you listen to rap music/care about NWA?

It sounds like Facebook is trying to target their platform to advertisers the same way advertisers already treat the market, generalise the crap out of everything. Same reason I see watches and American Express deals in the business magazines I read that I have absolutely no interest in buying - I'm a white, higher income male, so that's the product that gets flogged to my audience. It's simplified to all hell but advertisers like it that way because it doesn't require much work.

It'll let anyone who advertises on Univision have the exact same target demographic they use now on Facebook. It gives them a vague place to start that they figure might work. No one is interested in advertising Straight Outta Compton to NWA fans. Why? Because they're already going to go, you don't need to create hype and feed constant advertising to them to get them to go. So advertisers need a somewhat wider audience of people who might be interested in the movie but aren't easily identified as such, and that can be summarised as "black people". Give an advertiser that option and they'll go for it.

Why on earth Facebook went ahead and told the general public about this is beyond me, they're usually not very good at telling us the ways they try bleed us of every penny via advertising, why start now?