Online advertising's been built around the ability to know exactly who you are. Are you a guitar-playing, cat-owning botanist? You'll get served ads for guitar-shaped catnip hedge grow kits. Google, Twitter, and all other digital platforms where an advertisement can be served—with Facebook leading the charge—want to know everything about you, usually already do, and use that information to convince marketers that the ads you'll see are perfectly targeted to whoever you are (or aren't).
That's an intense stripe of power. And maybe that's fine—even, potentially, helpful—when advertisers are dividing people by shopping habits, or hobbies. But when it comes to identifiers like race or ethnicity, that targeting can devolve into discrimination that cements harmful societal norms. At worst, it can perpetuate blatant prejudice that can affect critical issues in our lives, like housing and hiring. Read more...
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