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Facebook Ads Can Still Discriminate, Despite a Civil Rights Settlement

65 points by sapski 7y ago

unlinked_dll 7y ago
* housing, employment, and credit Ads I think the easiest solution would be to disallow ads of those categories on their platform. I'd think the risk of "facebook/instagram is racist" damaging their brand and the cost of federal discrimination lawsuits would outweigh whatever revenue they project. As an aside, I know it's faux pas to bring up any observed (and/or presumed) differences between the protected classes - but maybe (just maybe) Facebook's targeting is smart enough to correlate "most likely to care" about things that tend to have skewed demographics without looking at the demographic data itself. Like the example in of truck driver ads targeting men, what is Facebook using to determine who they target? And do those data points line up with demographics? I don't know, but these kinds of systems are tough to introspect from the outside.
- wizzwizz4 7y ago
  That "smart"ness you describe is almost definitely what the algorithm's doing. And this is all well and good, until you take into consideration the fact that these systems tend to amplify existing biases. If it spots a correlation, it'll amplify the correlation, regardless of whether it's actually meaningful. There are probably some originally spurious correlations that Facebook has amplified into existence, given how big and all-encompassing it is. It's the same problems that lead to racist AI judges.
- larnmar 7y ago
  I suspect it’s going to become a massive shakedown racket over the next decade; groups will go to tech companies and allege their algorithms are racist/sexist/whatever, and keep complaining until paid to go away.
- strbean 7y ago
  Your aside is pretty much dead-on the big ethical issue with bias in ML right now. For example, ML can do quite a good job of predicting recidivism rates in convicts, and justice systems have been using this to aid in sentencing and parole hearings. Obviously, these ML approaches are not supposed to consider ethnicity. So the factor that ends up having the greatest weight is "did your father / grandfather spend time in prison", which is an extremely effective proxy for "are you not white". Basically, when your training data is based on a reality already heavily influenced by bias, your models will end up reflecting and perpetuating that bias.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    The real problem is that there is an actual racial disparity in recidivism rates, so an algorithm that makes accurate predictions will predict the racial disparity that actually exists. There is no way to solve that without significantly impairing the accuracy of the predictions -- which is to say releasing convicts who we know have an unreasonably high probability of recidivism merely because there were too many other convicts with an unreasonably high probability of recidivism who were the same race. You can also imagine what happens if you apply this recidivism "adjustment" to gender, which causes a lot of the people advocating it in the case of race to become nervous and defensive.
    - edmundsauto 7y ago
      Accuracy is not the top objective in these systems, fairness is.
      - s1artibartfast 7y ago
        In this example, what is fairness, if not the most accurate prediction possible?
        AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        Especially when you consider fairness to the community at large. Is it fair to black neighborhoods if we send proportionally more expected recidivist drug dealers and rapists back into their communities than we do to white communities?
        unlinked_dll 7y ago
        The effect of its use on policy.
        s1artibartfast 7y ago
        That is incredibly vague. What effect and what policy?
Excel_Wizard 7y ago
> Nevertheless, the composition of audiences can still tilt toward demographic groups such as men or younger workers, according to a study published today by researchers at Northeastern University and Upturn, a nonprofit group that focuses on digital inequities >One reason for the persistent bias is that Facebook’s modified algorithm appears to rely on proxy characteristics that correlate with age or gender, said Alan Mislove, a Northeastern University professor of computer science and one of the study’s co-authors. Hypothetically, let's say that the trucking company in the article used "people interested in cars" as a targeted group. It would come as no surprise to me if this group was > 80% male. It may even be by another mechanism- facebook's algorithm may look at the profiles of individuals that clicked through on ads in order to determine who to show the ads to in the future. This is a good way to provide cost effective advertisement. This also may be done in a way such that a small fraction of these ads are still shown to $membersOfProtectedClassX, even in cases where said class is statistically unlikely to click on the ad. What small fraction is necessary to be legally unproblematic? If Joe Schmoe creates a facebook ad to hire for a bricklaying job (a job which is 98% male), what percentage of those ads must be served to women to be legally compliant?
- ajross 7y ago
  > facebook ad to hire for a bricklaying job That's a straw man. The situation of concern is failing to advertise high value or high status products and opportunities to people who would be disadvantaged. So to stay with your analogy, if you have a job to hire a React developer (a job which is right around 90% male), but you don't show it to someone because their browsing history includes Pinterest but not Reddit, then you're discriminating. And that's a problem worth worrying about and trying to address. Likewise ads for vacation timeshares that go to Taylor Swift fans but not to Diddy afficionados. Yes, it's possible that there may be some collateral damage in the bricklaying recruiting industry. And, sure, maybe that's something that needs some regulatory relief. But mostly I think you're just looking for an example here.
  - throwaway1777 7y ago
    Who's to say today's bricklaying job is tomorrow's "high status" coding job?
whiddershins 7y ago
I can’t understand, in succinct plain terms, what the desired outcome is here. What would it look like if the ads were not biased, or discriminating, in any bad way.
- munk-a 7y ago
  Maybe it'd just look like it looked in the 90's, there wouldn't be targeted advertising and everyone except the marketers would be happier.
  - sp332 7y ago
    That's why, among other things, Facebook made "a tool so you can search for and view all current housing ads in the US targeted to different places across the country, regardless of whether the ads are shown to you." https://about.fb.com/news/2019/03/protecting-against-discrimination-in-ads/ https://about.fb.com/news/2019/03/protecting-against-discrim... So advertisers can target you, but they can't keep you from seeing an ad if you go looking for it.
    - munk-a 7y ago
      If this tool exists and allows ads to be viewed with the same visibility as their normal targeting then why are they bothering with targeted ads anymore?
      - mulmen 7y ago
        Because most people don't go out of their way to view advertising.
        koolba 7y ago
        If people realize they can use this to search directly for housing I can see a side business of creating min priced facebook ads just to get listed.
      - 7y ago
Koremat6666 7y ago
Targeted ads by definition are discriminatory. In fact the best ads are the ones that discriminate perfectly based on wishes of the advertiser.
- bduerst 7y ago
  The perfect ad is one that gives the consumer exactly what they want from the supplier. Ads solve the asymmetric information problem on imperfect markets, which require information to be efficient.
stickfigure 7y ago
This is silly. By definition, if you're advertising on Facebook, you're selecting for a certain demographic. It's a bit broader than the AARP but by picking any medium you are discriminating against the people who don't follow that medium. It's also weird to say you shouldn't be able to target certain demographics. An ad that resonates well with seniors might resonate poorly with millennials. You might want to attract both! So you run multiple ads. Or you target youngsters on Instagram and oldsters in the NYT. This is not something Facebook is in any position to police.
- wahern 7y ago
  I was curious about the source of Facebook's liability. It turns out their liability stems from the Fair Housing Act (FHA), 42 U.S. Code § 3604(c) (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/3604 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/3604) which has been repeatedly interpreted over the years to apply to publishers directly. Facebook has a duty to screen housing advertisements for discriminatory indications or intent. The question of whether this sort of disparate impact discrimination meets the criteria for 3604(c) is a different matter. (My uninformed guess is that it does not, but Facebook is being attacked on all sides so will probably be judicious regarding when and how hard it pushes back.)
cm2012 7y ago
This is beyond stupid. What they're saying is that even if you target people who write "I love programming" on their fb page, it's still discriminatory towards women because men are more likely to write those words.
- umvi 7y ago
  Yeah but that's a self reinforcing feedback loop. Only showing programming ads to people that write "I love programming" is like only showing religious ads to people that write "I love God". The advertisements do not help outgroups break in and in fact may push them farther away.
  - Causality1 7y ago
    To which the response is... So? Progressive social engineering is not the responsibility of advertisers or of Facebook. If I want to hire someone to do artwork for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign book I'm not going to place an ad in Guns 'N Ammo, despite how underrepresented that demographic is in the tabletop roleplaying industry.
    - JetSpiegel 7y ago
      > Progressive social engineering is not the responsibility of advertisers or of Facebook. Correct, it's the responsibility of the government to rein in on private sector policies that destroy the commons for a quick buck. Which they did by passing anti-discrimination legislation that Facebook is flouting.
- mc32 7y ago
  Exactly, if I were going to put an ad for a babysitter, probably looking to get a highschooler who has some free time and needs some spending money, I'm not hoping the car mechanic who got laid off and is looking to pay rent gets to see that ad. Likewise if I were to want help in taxidermying a cat, I'm not wanting the butcher or the baxter seeing the ad as well. I only want the taxidermist.
- LanceH 7y ago
duxup 7y ago
>proxy characteristics that correlate with age or gender Isn't that just how humanity, is? Some things appeal to some demographics more than others? I'm not sure anyone can prevent that.

65 points by sapski 7y ago

* housing, employment, and credit Ads I think the easiest solution would be to disallow ads of those categories on their platform. I'd think the risk of "facebook/instagram is racist" damaging their brand and the cost of federal discrimination lawsuits would outweigh whatever revenue they project. As an aside, I know it's faux pas to bring up any observed (and/or presumed) differences between the protected classes - but maybe (just maybe) Facebook's targeting is smart enough to correlate "most likely to care" about things that tend to have skewed demographics without looking at the demographic data itself. Like the example in of truck driver ads targeting men, what is Facebook using to determine who they target? And do those data points line up with demographics? I don't know, but these kinds of systems are tough to introspect from the outside.

wizzwizz4 7y ago
That "smart"ness you describe is almost definitely what the algorithm's doing. And this is all well and good, until you take into consideration the fact that these systems tend to amplify existing biases. If it spots a correlation, it'll amplify the correlation, regardless of whether it's actually meaningful. There are probably some originally spurious correlations that Facebook has amplified into existence, given how big and all-encompassing it is. It's the same problems that lead to racist AI judges.
larnmar 7y ago
I suspect it’s going to become a massive shakedown racket over the next decade; groups will go to tech companies and allege their algorithms are racist/sexist/whatever, and keep complaining until paid to go away.
strbean 7y ago
Your aside is pretty much dead-on the big ethical issue with bias in ML right now. For example, ML can do quite a good job of predicting recidivism rates in convicts, and justice systems have been using this to aid in sentencing and parole hearings. Obviously, these ML approaches are not supposed to consider ethnicity. So the factor that ends up having the greatest weight is "did your father / grandfather spend time in prison", which is an extremely effective proxy for "are you not white". Basically, when your training data is based on a reality already heavily influenced by bias, your models will end up reflecting and perpetuating that bias.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  The real problem is that there is an actual racial disparity in recidivism rates, so an algorithm that makes accurate predictions will predict the racial disparity that actually exists. There is no way to solve that without significantly impairing the accuracy of the predictions -- which is to say releasing convicts who we know have an unreasonably high probability of recidivism merely because there were too many other convicts with an unreasonably high probability of recidivism who were the same race. You can also imagine what happens if you apply this recidivism "adjustment" to gender, which causes a lot of the people advocating it in the case of race to become nervous and defensive.
  - edmundsauto 7y ago
    Accuracy is not the top objective in these systems, fairness is.
    - s1artibartfast 7y ago
      In this example, what is fairness, if not the most accurate prediction possible?
      - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
        Especially when you consider fairness to the community at large. Is it fair to black neighborhoods if we send proportionally more expected recidivist drug dealers and rapists back into their communities than we do to white communities?
      - unlinked_dll 7y ago
        The effect of its use on policy.
        s1artibartfast 7y ago
        That is incredibly vague. What effect and what policy?

Excel_Wizard 7y ago

> Nevertheless, the composition of audiences can still tilt toward demographic groups such as men or younger workers, according to a study published today by researchers at Northeastern University and Upturn, a nonprofit group that focuses on digital inequities >One reason for the persistent bias is that Facebook’s modified algorithm appears to rely on proxy characteristics that correlate with age or gender, said Alan Mislove, a Northeastern University professor of computer science and one of the study’s co-authors. Hypothetically, let's say that the trucking company in the article used "people interested in cars" as a targeted group. It would come as no surprise to me if this group was > 80% male. It may even be by another mechanism- facebook's algorithm may look at the profiles of individuals that clicked through on ads in order to determine who to show the ads to in the future. This is a good way to provide cost effective advertisement. This also may be done in a way such that a small fraction of these ads are still shown to $membersOfProtectedClassX, even in cases where said class is statistically unlikely to click on the ad. What small fraction is necessary to be legally unproblematic? If Joe Schmoe creates a facebook ad to hire for a bricklaying job (a job which is 98% male), what percentage of those ads must be served to women to be legally compliant?

ajross 7y ago
> facebook ad to hire for a bricklaying job That's a straw man. The situation of concern is failing to advertise high value or high status products and opportunities to people who would be disadvantaged. So to stay with your analogy, if you have a job to hire a React developer (a job which is right around 90% male), but you don't show it to someone because their browsing history includes Pinterest but not Reddit, then you're discriminating. And that's a problem worth worrying about and trying to address. Likewise ads for vacation timeshares that go to Taylor Swift fans but not to Diddy afficionados. Yes, it's possible that there may be some collateral damage in the bricklaying recruiting industry. And, sure, maybe that's something that needs some regulatory relief. But mostly I think you're just looking for an example here.
- throwaway1777 7y ago
  Who's to say today's bricklaying job is tomorrow's "high status" coding job?

whiddershins 7y ago

I can’t understand, in succinct plain terms, what the desired outcome is here. What would it look like if the ads were not biased, or discriminating, in any bad way.

munk-a 7y ago
Maybe it'd just look like it looked in the 90's, there wouldn't be targeted advertising and everyone except the marketers would be happier.
- sp332 7y ago
  That's why, among other things, Facebook made "a tool so you can search for and view all current housing ads in the US targeted to different places across the country, regardless of whether the ads are shown to you." https://about.fb.com/news/2019/03/protecting-against-discrimination-in-ads/ https://about.fb.com/news/2019/03/protecting-against-discrim... So advertisers can target you, but they can't keep you from seeing an ad if you go looking for it.
  - munk-a 7y ago
    If this tool exists and allows ads to be viewed with the same visibility as their normal targeting then why are they bothering with targeted ads anymore?
    - mulmen 7y ago
      Because most people don't go out of their way to view advertising.
      - koolba 7y ago
        If people realize they can use this to search directly for housing I can see a side business of creating min priced facebook ads just to get listed.
    - 7y ago

Koremat6666 7y ago

Targeted ads by definition are discriminatory. In fact the best ads are the ones that discriminate perfectly based on wishes of the advertiser.

bduerst 7y ago
The perfect ad is one that gives the consumer exactly what they want from the supplier. Ads solve the asymmetric information problem on imperfect markets, which require information to be efficient.

stickfigure 7y ago

This is silly. By definition, if you're advertising on Facebook, you're selecting for a certain demographic. It's a bit broader than the AARP but by picking any medium you are discriminating against the people who don't follow that medium. It's also weird to say you shouldn't be able to target certain demographics. An ad that resonates well with seniors might resonate poorly with millennials. You might want to attract both! So you run multiple ads. Or you target youngsters on Instagram and oldsters in the NYT. This is not something Facebook is in any position to police.

wahern 7y ago
I was curious about the source of Facebook's liability. It turns out their liability stems from the Fair Housing Act (FHA), 42 U.S. Code § 3604(c) (https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/3604 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/3604) which has been repeatedly interpreted over the years to apply to publishers directly. Facebook has a duty to screen housing advertisements for discriminatory indications or intent. The question of whether this sort of disparate impact discrimination meets the criteria for 3604(c) is a different matter. (My uninformed guess is that it does not, but Facebook is being attacked on all sides so will probably be judicious regarding when and how hard it pushes back.)

cm2012 7y ago

This is beyond stupid. What they're saying is that even if you target people who write "I love programming" on their fb page, it's still discriminatory towards women because men are more likely to write those words.

umvi 7y ago
Yeah but that's a self reinforcing feedback loop. Only showing programming ads to people that write "I love programming" is like only showing religious ads to people that write "I love God". The advertisements do not help outgroups break in and in fact may push them farther away.
- Causality1 7y ago
  To which the response is... So? Progressive social engineering is not the responsibility of advertisers or of Facebook. If I want to hire someone to do artwork for a Dungeons and Dragons campaign book I'm not going to place an ad in Guns 'N Ammo, despite how underrepresented that demographic is in the tabletop roleplaying industry.
  - JetSpiegel 7y ago
    > Progressive social engineering is not the responsibility of advertisers or of Facebook. Correct, it's the responsibility of the government to rein in on private sector policies that destroy the commons for a quick buck. Which they did by passing anti-discrimination legislation that Facebook is flouting.
mc32 7y ago
Exactly, if I were going to put an ad for a babysitter, probably looking to get a highschooler who has some free time and needs some spending money, I'm not hoping the car mechanic who got laid off and is looking to pay rent gets to see that ad. Likewise if I were to want help in taxidermying a cat, I'm not wanting the butcher or the baxter seeing the ad as well. I only want the taxidermist.
LanceH 7y ago

duxup 7y ago

>proxy characteristics that correlate with age or gender Isn't that just how humanity, is? Some things appeal to some demographics more than others? I'm not sure anyone can prevent that.