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Caucasians are a category that can be selected from that list too, right? So, the article lead should be ammended from: "Facebook’s system allows advertisers t

Caucasians are a category that can be selected from that list too, right? So, the article lead should be ammended from: "Facebook’s system allows advertisers to exclude black, Hispanic, and other “ethnic affinities” from seeing ads." To this: "Facebook’s system allows advertisers to exclude white, black, Hispanic, and other “ethnic affinities” from seeing ads." This is a good example of lying by omission. Ethically, there is nothing wrong with this system if the exclusion can be applied equally to any ethnic group. And besides, we need this for practical reasons: there are special creams for people of certain pigments that won't work for my vanilla face...

tambourine_man 10y ago
> Caucasians are a category that can be selected from that list too, right? Not according to Gruber[1]: UPDATE: Their filter lets you screen out Asian-Americans, African-Americans, and Hispanics, but it doesn’t let you screen out white people? How did anyone at Facebook think this was a good idea? [1]https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-lets-advertisers-exclude-users-by-race https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-lets-advertisers...
- deleted 10y ago
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- hairy_man674 10y ago
  I don't use FB (privacy concerns and commercialization of human beings) so give the interested source benefit of the doubt. So FB has made an oversight. The engineers and designers should do the politically correct thing here and add white people as a category. Most importantly, the special creams advertisers...
  - acjohnson55 10y ago
    That doesn't really solve the problem of them explicitly creating a platform for discriminatory advertising. This is also the sort of thing where I have to ask, how many people of color were apart of the design and implementation of this functionality?
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amelius 10y ago
> Ethically, there is nothing wrong with this system if the exclusion can be applied equally to any ethnic group. That is only shifting the responsibility to the person clicking (or not clicking) the checkbox.
- hairy_man674 10y ago
  ... thereby exonerating Facebook from the racial discrimination imputed to its advertising problem. Are you really suggesting that platform providers are fully accountable for the abusive use of their services?
  - sverige 10y ago
    It shouldn't be an option. So yes, they are accountable.

tambourine_man 10y ago

> Caucasians are a category that can be selected from that list too, right? Not according to Gruber[1]: UPDATE: Their filter lets you screen out Asian-Americans, African-Americans, and Hispanics, but it doesn’t let you screen out white people? How did anyone at Facebook think this was a good idea? [1]https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-lets-advertisers-exclude-users-by-race https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-lets-advertisers...

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hairy_man674 10y ago
I don't use FB (privacy concerns and commercialization of human beings) so give the interested source benefit of the doubt. So FB has made an oversight. The engineers and designers should do the politically correct thing here and add white people as a category. Most importantly, the special creams advertisers...
- acjohnson55 10y ago
  That doesn't really solve the problem of them explicitly creating a platform for discriminatory advertising. This is also the sort of thing where I have to ask, how many people of color were apart of the design and implementation of this functionality?

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amelius 10y ago

> Ethically, there is nothing wrong with this system if the exclusion can be applied equally to any ethnic group. That is only shifting the responsibility to the person clicking (or not clicking) the checkbox.

hairy_man674 10y ago
... thereby exonerating Facebook from the racial discrimination imputed to its advertising problem. Are you really suggesting that platform providers are fully accountable for the abusive use of their services?
- sverige 10y ago
  It shouldn't be an option. So yes, they are accountable.