San Francisco — Tuesday’s Meta changed advertising technology in a reconciliation with the Justice Department over allegations that its advertising system discriminated against Facebook users by limiting who could see home ads on the platform, 115,054. Based on race, gender and zip code that you have agreed to pay a dollar penalty.
Under the agreement, Meta, formerly known as Facebook, Said to change the technology It then uses new computer-aided methods aimed at regularly checking to see if the audience eligible to target and receive home ads is actually seeing those ads. A new method, called a “decentralized reduction system,” relies on machine learning to ensure that advertisers are delivering home-related ads to certain protected classes of people.
“We sometimes take snapshots of marketer audiences to see who they are targeting and remove as much difference as possible from that audience,” said Meta’s Vice President and Vice President of Civil Rights. Legal adviser Roy L. Austin said in an interview. He called it “a significant technological advance in how to use machine learning to deliver personalized ads.”
Facebook, which has become a business giant by collecting user data and allowing advertisers to target ads based on the characteristics of their audience, complains that some of these practices are biased and discriminatory. I have been facing for many years. The company’s advertising system allows marketers to use thousands of different characteristics to select who sees their ads, and these advertisers can also exclude people who fall into many protected categories. I can do it.
Although the settlement on Tuesday is related to home advertising, Meta also said it plans to apply a new system to check the targeting of advertising related to employment and credit.The company previously tolerated prejudice against women in job ads and attracted certain groups of people. View credit card ads..
“With this groundbreaking proceeding, Meta will change its ad serving system for the first time to address algorithmic discrimination,” said Damian Williams, a US lawyer. Said in a statement.. “But if Meta fails to prove that it has changed the delivery system enough to prevent algorithmic bias, the office will continue the proceedings.”
Meta also said it wouldn’t use a feature called “special ad audience”, a tool developed by advertisers to help them grow the group of people they reach. The Justice Department said the tool was also involved in discriminatory practices. The company said the tool was an early effort to combat stigma and that the new method would be more effective.
The issue of biased ad targeting is particularly discussed in home advertising. In 2018, Ben Carson, secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, announced Formal complaint He accused Facebook of having a company with an “illegal discriminated” advertising system based on categories such as race, religion, and disability. The possibility of Facebook advertising discrimination was also revealed in 2016 Investigation According to ProPublica, the company’s technology makes it easy for marketers to exclude certain ethnic groups for advertising purposes.
2019, HUD sued Facebook For engaging in housing discrimination and violating the Civil Rights Act. The agency said Facebook’s system didn’t serve “diverse audiences” even though advertisers wanted to see the ad widely.
“Facebook discriminates against people based on who they are and where they live,” Carson said at the time. “Using a computer to limit a person’s housing options is as discriminatory as closing a door on someone’s face.”
The HUD proceedings have inherent biases built into the vast and complex advertising systems that underpin some of the largest Internet platforms, from civil rights groups arguing that technology companies such as Meta and Google should fight more. Happened in a wide range of pushes. Regain those prejudices.
The field of study known as “algorithm fairness” has become an important concern among computer scientists in the field of artificial intelligence. Leading researchers, including former Google scientists such as Timnit Gebru and Margaret Mitchell, have warned of such prejudices for years.
Since then, Facebook has limited the types of categories marketers can choose when buying home ads, reduced the number to hundreds, and eliminated the option of targeting based on race, age, and zip code.
Meta’s new system, still under development, occasionally checks to whom home, employment, and credit ads are served, ensuring that their audience matches the people marketers want to target. For example, if the ads delivered begin to be heavily biased towards white men in their twenties, the new system will theoretically recognize this and shift ads to be more equitable among a wider and more diverse audience. increase.
Meta has agreed to a third-party audit of the effectiveness of the new system, stating that it will work with the HUD over the next few months to incorporate this technology into Meta’s advertising targeting system.
The Penalty paid by Meta in the settlement is the maximum amount available under the Civil Rights Act, the Justice Ministry said.
