Facebook Signs Agreement With Washington State To End Discriminatory Ad Targeting (reuters.com) 86
Last month, Washington filed a lawsuit against Facebook (and Google) for failing to disclose political ad spending, as required by state law. Washington law requires that "political campaign and lobbying contributions and expenditures be fully disclosed to the public and that secrecy is to be avoided." Today, as reported by Reuters, Facebook has signed an agreement with the state to stop third-party advertisers in the U.S. from excluding protected groups from seeing their ads. From the report: Facebook confirmed the agreement with the state, and said the announcement is part of a long process to ensure that tools used to target ads on the social network are safe, civil, and fair. "We've removed thousands of categories related to potentially sensitive personal attributes -- like race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion -- from our exclusion targeting tools," the company said, pointing to its efforts from over a year-and-a-half. The legally binding agreement with Washington state requires Facebook to make the changes to its ad platform within 90 days, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said.
One state down, (Score:2)
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It was already illegal. Everywhere. The much bigger mystery is why only Washington has sued, so far.
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Yeah, black people have as much right to see sunscreen lotion ads as white people do.
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The other mystery... (Score:2)
...is why when you or I get caught breaking the law, we can't just sign a legal agreement saying that we won't do it again.
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Why isn't this illegal in every state? Maybe the story and the issue was targeted only to Washington State voters.
Re: One state down, (Score:1)
Why should it be illegal? Nobody is asking for ads. Ads are not rights, they are nuisance. The discriminatory protection is only for rights. I am happy to be excluded from any.
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You're not going to get any less ads, and ads that aren't targeted tend to be even more of a nuisance to people. That's why most people don't opt out from ad targeting systems on various sites now that GDPR allows for it.
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Why is this illegal? Does it hurt that gay clubs can advertise to just gays, and not cause objections because their ads show up for conservative Christian types?
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You think conservative Christian types (and similar) should be encouraged to live in a bubble? I think it's a great idea for gay people to see stuff from conservative Christians and vice-versa. Keeps everyone in-the-loop and opens opportunities for dialogue and understanding. It also reduces opportunities for individuals and organisations to mischaracterise groups perceived as "others" and mislead their followers. There's nothing quite like a little familiarity to reduce poorly informed discrimination.
The m
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If you think that advertising is the good way of "piercing the bubble", you are beyond hope. Advertising is what pisses off even the people that advertising is for in many cases. Ads are annoying. Welcome to realisation made in 20th century.
If you want to pierce bubbles, you're going to have to actually get off the ivory tower and talk to people, rather than aim to piss them off even more with ads they will find offensive.
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If you think that advertising is the good way of "piercing the bubble", you are beyond hope. Advertising is what pisses off even the people that advertising is for in many cases. Ads are annoying. Welcome to realisation made in 20th century.
Seeing advertising aimed at a group you are not part of is an excellent way to see how they're manipulated, what pushes their buttons, and how others are trying to exploit their biases and prejudices. As an outsider, your buttons are unlikely to be pushed by the messages/implications in the ads, giving you a cool, calm, and collected analytical view. Imagine watching an ad aimed at a group you disagree with. How likely are you to say to yourself, "Man, how do they fall for that shit?!"
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You're talking as an analyst.
Audience is the exact opposite of an analyst. Reaction is also the opposite. Which is why there was so much screaming about "offensive ads showing up on video" on google a few years ago.
Personal targetting needs to stop in all forms (Score:4, Insightful)
Ads should only be topic based. Things like search criteria, clicked links, subject matter of the webpage.
Ditch tracking.
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Finally heterosexual men can see "Unicorn Butt Cops" advertisements. The long hard night has met its end.
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I can't tell if you're opposed to inappropriate ad content or not.
Dog gone (Score:4, Insightful)
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They will pay, just like they used to pay before Facebook existed.
Facebook's bigger problem is that their user base is getting older, with all the lucrative 18-36 year olds moving to other platforms.
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Then again, older people also don't buy into half the stupid shit the younger do. //refactoring to generalize
This now works for every generation since Jack traded his mother's cow for those stupid beans. I, for one, can recount some STUPID buying decisions I've made in my life that I'm not likely to repeat. The problem with older people is not that they're smarter. It's that they're more experienced. They've had time to have been there and to have done that. They got the t-shirt, and it fell apart befo
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Advertisers want to know which side of the door your dog wants to be on at any given moment. Marketers want your dog to pay to be on the other side.
What??!! (Score:3)
I was just getting used to the end of Net Neutrality and having my ISP be able to block all these annoying GOP websites and ads begging for money. Now you are telling me that I'm going to have to see them?
Noooooo!!!!!
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They can't stop you from holding a meeting or rally.
For that, you need to call in Antifa.
Facebook Patent Covers Race-Based Content Access (Score:4, Informative)
From U.S. Patent 9,692,838 [uspto.gov], assigned to Facebook, Inc. for Generating business insights using beacons on online social networks:
"In particular embodiments, authorization to access or view content deposited at one or more beacons 310 (e.g., by a user, social-networking system 160, or third-party system 170) may be based on conditions set by the creator or depositor of the content or by another entity. A restrictive condition on access to certain content at one or more beacons 310 may include membership in a specified group. For example, authorized group members may include, by example and not by way of limitation: members of a certain social club; users who have purchased access rights to the particular content; direct connections of a particular user node or concept node in social graph 200; users having phone numbers with a certain area code or prefix; registered users of a downloaded mobile device application, other suitable conditions, or any combination thereof. Restrictions to access may additionally be based on user-specific information, including but not limited to: demographic attributes of the user (e.g., age, gender, nationality, race, ethnicity, and/or locality);"
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From U.S. Patent 9,692,838 [uspto.gov], assigned to Facebook, Inc. for Generating business insights using beacons on online social networks:
"In particular embodiments, authorization to access or view content deposited at one or more beacons 310 (e.g., by a user, social-networking system 160, or third-party system 170) may be based on conditions set by the creator or depositor of the content or by another entity. A restrictive condition on access to certain content at one or more beacons 310 may include membership in a specified group. For example, authorized group members may include, by example and not by way of limitation: members of a certain social club; users who have purchased access rights to the particular content; direct connections of a particular user node or concept node in social graph 200; users having phone numbers with a certain area code or prefix; registered users of a downloaded mobile device application, other suitable conditions, or any combination thereof. Restrictions to access may additionally be based on user-specific information, including but not limited to: demographic attributes of the user (e.g., age, gender, nationality, race, ethnicity, and/or locality);"
Which means you can target an ad toward African Americans if you want. If you have a product that is marketed to African Americans, why would you want to pay for clicks from others? If I am selling Bibles, I might want to target my ad to Christians and not have it pop up on everyone else' view.
Just because a feature can be abused does not mean it was created with evil intent.
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Its ok to exclude white people, It is not ok to exclude black and brown people.
Great !!! (Score:3)
So now I'll get non targeted targeted ads. I can expect Geri curl, tampon, and spanx ads to go with my jewish singles dating site banner ads. I think I'd rather be profiled...
No African Americans, Hebrews, or women were harmed in the crafting of this overly sarcastic post.
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less effective ads will lead to pressure to show even more ads.
No. This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how businesses work.
Businesses don't set a revenue goal, and then spend whatever it takes to get that level of sales.
What they do instead is try to MAXIMIZE PROFIT.
So if ads are LESS effective, they will generate LESS profit and there will be FEWER of them.
I'm not convinced. (Score:2)
There is a saying that 90% of any advertising budget is wasted, but nobody knows which 90%.
For most businesses there is a simple correlation: No ads, no business. So don't ever expect fewer ads unless the 90% can be reduced.
And business plans do feature revenue targets.
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will have to buy more ads in order to accomplish that.
No. This is nonsense. If it costs $10 per MM to place ads, and one campaign brings in $8 per MM, and the other $12, then the second will be run again and the first will not. This isn't rocket science.
less precise the targeting, the cheaper the ad.
No. You pay per impression or per click. If you mistarget, or just shotgun, you don't get a discount.
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That explains the relentless string of commercials on broadcast TV and radio.
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" certain ads are more/less effective when shown to groups divided on 'protected' attributes"
Except Facebook never provided a facility that could target ads to African Americans, you could only eliminate them from ad targeting. It was never a general purpose ad targeting facility, and defending general purpose targeting is actually off-topic.
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Why not take it one step further by mandating bong ads in National Geographic Magazine.
Why limit the ruling to online services. Mandate it to paper media also.
How about AR-15 ads in Woman's Day Magazine too?
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This is Washington State. Bong ads in NatGeo would actually be a good ad investment. Just put the words indigenous and fair-trade in the description.
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I miss my bong, but the GF insisted it go, and banned smoking indoors. I gave it and my pipe for a vaporizer/atomizer. What I don't miss about it was the horribly toxic mess bong water turned into after just a hit or two, and the mess made when one of your stoned buddies inevitably knocked the thing over.
I don't understand (Score:1)
what any of this means.
Or if it even means anything.
This is one discrimination I could have liked (Score:2)
What's not to like about NOT getting to see ads?
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If ads aren't targeted, they'll have to have more impressions of the same ads to get the same amount of relevant views. Non-targeted ads are also cheaper for this very reason than accurately targeted ones.
So this is going to lead to you seeing more ads, because non-targeted ads are cheaper per impression and they need to show more of them to hit the target audiences.
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So this is going to lead to your ad filter having to filter more ads, because non-targeted ads are cheaper per impression and they need to show more of them to hit the target audiences.
FTFY
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This is irrelevant to discussion at hand. Adblock working is a completely separate issue.
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Not quite. Without ads becoming so incredibly annoying and invasive, most users would not have bothered with adblockers.
Until not that long ago, adblockers were not too common. I mean, let's face it. You have people who put up with 5+ minutes boot times because they can't be bothered to delete old crap that infests their "run at boot" folders. You have people who put up with browser windows that are barely the size of a phone screen because they can't be assed to delete the billion browser bars that got ins
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That's a really weird and roundabout way of admitting to the point I made above.
Confusing summary? (Score:2)
The summary talks about FB being in trouble for NOT DISCLOSING political ads, but then continues about an agreement to restrict filtering ad content by certain protected criteria like race...is it one, the other, or both?