[sp332]

For stuff like "employment, housing and credit", it's illegal to discriminate in advertising. That's why they made a whole new portal to try to avoid discrimination for those kinds of ads. So after a while if you gather data and realize that your algorithm is sexist and ageist, then continuing to use that algorithm to place ads is knowingly using sexist and ageist techniques in advertising. I think the EEOC has the authority to determine how non-discriminating FB will have to be to avoid trouble.

[theartfuldodger]

Those regulatory concerns should fall onto the purchasers list of responsibilities. The EEOC has the authority to censure the parties misusing their advertising options.

For example as a marketer who does work in all of the above industries , technology should not limit my use of my dollar.

If i have 10,000 for an apartment campaign, i should be able to spend 5k on ads showcasing my apartment gym focused on men and 5k on the view of the gym full of men targeted to women.( tongue in cheek example)

If the actual top level strategy is not discriminatory but rather is segmented to allow better messaging, any bullshit tech blocks shouldn't get in the way. Let the regulators do their jobs the old fashioned way.

You are right though, there are always ways to define the necessary audience using the the type of qualifiers you describe.

[sapski]

Author of the underlying study here.

Facebook has been insisting that non-discrimination should be the responsibility of the purchasers, but we've shown over [0] and over [1] again [2] that even when the advertiser targets all groups proportionally (no misuse of advertising options), Facebook subselects who to show their ads to in a skewed way, leaving the advertiser and the users no recourse.

[0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1904.02095.pdf

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1912.04255.pdf

[2] https://sapiezynski.com/papers/sapiezynski2019algorithms.pdf

[bostik]

I just read half of the last paper (and skimmed the other half). It is surprising that the paper does not use the term "information theory" even once. The research basically bumps into the established facts that properly hiding or destroying information is really hard.

Advertising industry has known this since ancient times. Military signals intelligence has been essentially built with that tidbit as its core. Even weak proxies are formidable if you have bucketloads of them to choose and combine from.

Now, let's make one thing clear: I am not a FB apologist. In fact, I find the modern advertising systems abhorrent, immoral and outright vile. But even then, this article felt like the authors chose to miss the point. Hiding information is incredibly difficult - and conflating "information theory is damn hard" with "FB[ß] are evil and/or immoral" feels intellectually dishonest.

For what it's worth, I would actually love to see research _and_ well sourced articles about the practical net effects of information theoretical attacks, intentional or not, on the human populations as observed through the various e-stalking platforms.

ß: I'm using "FB" here as a shortcut for FANG+MS+others.

[salawat]

>Those regulatory concerns should fall onto the purchasers list of responsibilities.

Firearm/drug/financial regulations have already ruined that approach for you sadly.

It has been deemed time and again that the easiest place for regulators to apply pressure is on those producing the thing to be regulated. It is much easier to stop (undesirable thing) when the means of making (undesirable thing) happen are either tightly controlled or otherwise forbidden.

The smaller numbers of major players created by the necessarily high capital investment is much easier to control and surveil than having to keep every Tom, Dick, and Harry honest.

It's weird. I've been getting so disheartened as I branch out and diversify into various regulated fields of activity just to realize how much we have to hamstring ourselves to keep everyone honest; or at least to have a snowball's chance at figuring out what happened when something went wrong in order to ensure it won't happen again.

Half of me wants to chew my shoe over the degree of difficulty and implicit frustration encountered trying to get anything remotely compliant off the ground. The other half of just kind of bows it's head at the fact that the rule ended up coming into existence to solve one problem or another.

Cognitive dissonance and I seem to be full-time roommates nowadays, and it's rather exhausting. All part of growing up I suppose.