Racism In Online Ad Targeting 474
An anonymous reader writes "Most of us are familiar with advertisements in online web searching, and by now we've grown accustomed to scrolling past the 'sponsored' results to get to the real responses to our query. And we know the ads are context-sensitive; for example, searching for our favorite Federation Starship will bring up ads for a similarly-named car-rental agency. But now a Harvard University professor has found a more disturbing trend in those contextual ads: racism. 'Sweeney says she has evidence that black identifying names are up to 25 per cent more likely to be served with an arrest-related ad. "There is discrimination in delivery of these ads," she concludes. Sweeney gathered this evidence by collecting over 2000 names that were suggestive of race. For example, first names such as Trevon, Lakisha and Darnell suggest the owner is black while names like Laurie, Brendan and Katie suggest the owner is white. She then entered these plus surnames into Google.com and Reuters.com and examined the ads they returned. Most names generated ads for public records. However, black-identifying names turned out to be much more likely than white-identifying names to generate ads that including the word "arrest" (60 per cent versus 48 per cent).'"
Now if names can be racially identifying.... (Score:5, Funny)
isn't it racist to give them to your kids?
Sounds like Bowfinger (Score:5, Funny)
Kit: The letter K appears in this script 1,456 times. That's perfectly divisible by 3.
Freddy: So what? So what you saying?
Kit: What am I saying? KKK appears in this script 486 times!
Re:Last name is black (Score:5, Funny)
It's mustn't be easy being Green.
Re:Racism is a cause, (Score:5, Funny)
Google adsense thinks I'm gay.
Apparently if you have an interest in weapons (I'm a military contractor) and yoga (and fitness instructor), you're also interested in an all-you-can-eat sausage buffet.
Re:Racism is a cause, (Score:4, Funny)
Dr. Latanya Sweeney? (Score:5, Funny)