3 ms·

Maybe there's something inherently wrong with targeted ads...

by sincerely 8y ago

zo1 8y ago
Maybe there's something inherently wrong with thought-policing via "anti-discrimination" laws.
ghaff 8y ago
Pretty much every ad ever written in any medium is targeted to some degree or other.
perl4ever 8y ago
"Targeting" seems to me to be completely synonymous with "discriminating".
quotemstr 8y ago
Is it inherently wrong to publish an ad in the Wall Street Journal and not then publish the same ad in Teen Vogue?
- sincerely 8y ago
  No, which suggests to me that something changes when you cross from print advertising to digital advertising, but I'm not sure what.
  - quotemstr 8y ago
    Is it wrong to publish an ad on the Wall Street Journal website and not run the same ad on the Teen Vogue website?
    - sincerely 8y ago
      Is that something that actually happens? Do people say "let's run this ad on teenvogue.com"? Don't websites (especially businesses of the scale of WSJ/vogue/etc) get their ads from ad networks?
      - quotemstr 8y ago
        My question stands. It's easy in current ad targeting setups to limit an ad to running on particular sites or to prohibit an ad from running on certain sites. If someone were to run an ad and configure the campaign such that it appeared on the Wall Street Journal website and not the Teen Vogue website, would this action have any different moral or legal character from deciding to run a print at in the Wall Street Journal instead of Teen Vogue? Why or why not?
- jogjayr 8y ago
  No. Because anyone can buy the WSJ and Teen Vogue and see the ad. If you're excluded from being targeted by an FB ad you have no chance of seeing it. If that exclusion criteria forms the basis of a protected class and the ad in question relates to housing, that's illegal. So it's a very narrow set of behaviors that are wrong here, not all of ad targeting. E.g. it's probably not illegal (or even morally wrong) to exclude someone who is interested in topics such as "Hinduism" from ads for beef jerky. Even though religion is a protected class, beef jerky isn't housing. Similarly, it's (probably) not wrong to exclude low-income people from ads for your high-end condo because AFAIK income isn't a protected class.
  - quotemstr 8y ago
    I'm not sure it's that easy. The complaint dings Facebook for allowing targeting of ads by zip code. Isn't it the case in principle that people choose to live in certain areas? I don't think that discriminating on the basis of voluntary association that happens to correlate with protected group membership is enough to spare one from HUD's gaze.
    - jogjayr 8y ago
      That's just one of the charges. The others are even more damning - targeting by sex, religion or country of origin.
      - quotemstr 8y ago
        > That's just one of the charges. The others are even more damning Irrelevant. Your claim is that targeting limitations cover only protected class membership itself and not proxies for protected class membership. I provided an example of the HUD penalizing Facebook for allowing targeting by a proxy. How is pointing out that the HUD is also complaining about non-proxy targeting supposed to invalidate my point about the HUD targeting a proxy?

Maybe there's something inherently wrong with targeted ads...

zo1 8y ago

Maybe there's something inherently wrong with thought-policing via "anti-discrimination" laws.

ghaff 8y ago

Pretty much every ad ever written in any medium is targeted to some degree or other.

perl4ever 8y ago

"Targeting" seems to me to be completely synonymous with "discriminating".

quotemstr 8y ago

Is it inherently wrong to publish an ad in the Wall Street Journal and not then publish the same ad in Teen Vogue?

sincerely 8y ago
No, which suggests to me that something changes when you cross from print advertising to digital advertising, but I'm not sure what.
- quotemstr 8y ago
  Is it wrong to publish an ad on the Wall Street Journal website and not run the same ad on the Teen Vogue website?
  - sincerely 8y ago
    Is that something that actually happens? Do people say "let's run this ad on teenvogue.com"? Don't websites (especially businesses of the scale of WSJ/vogue/etc) get their ads from ad networks?
    - quotemstr 8y ago
      My question stands. It's easy in current ad targeting setups to limit an ad to running on particular sites or to prohibit an ad from running on certain sites. If someone were to run an ad and configure the campaign such that it appeared on the Wall Street Journal website and not the Teen Vogue website, would this action have any different moral or legal character from deciding to run a print at in the Wall Street Journal instead of Teen Vogue? Why or why not?
jogjayr 8y ago
No. Because anyone can buy the WSJ and Teen Vogue and see the ad. If you're excluded from being targeted by an FB ad you have no chance of seeing it. If that exclusion criteria forms the basis of a protected class and the ad in question relates to housing, that's illegal. So it's a very narrow set of behaviors that are wrong here, not all of ad targeting. E.g. it's probably not illegal (or even morally wrong) to exclude someone who is interested in topics such as "Hinduism" from ads for beef jerky. Even though religion is a protected class, beef jerky isn't housing. Similarly, it's (probably) not wrong to exclude low-income people from ads for your high-end condo because AFAIK income isn't a protected class.
- quotemstr 8y ago
  I'm not sure it's that easy. The complaint dings Facebook for allowing targeting of ads by zip code. Isn't it the case in principle that people choose to live in certain areas? I don't think that discriminating on the basis of voluntary association that happens to correlate with protected group membership is enough to spare one from HUD's gaze.
  - jogjayr 8y ago
    That's just one of the charges. The others are even more damning - targeting by sex, religion or country of origin.
    - quotemstr 8y ago
      > That's just one of the charges. The others are even more damning Irrelevant. Your claim is that targeting limitations cover only protected class membership itself and not proxies for protected class membership. I provided an example of the HUD penalizing Facebook for allowing targeting by a proxy. How is pointing out that the HUD is also complaining about non-proxy targeting supposed to invalidate my point about the HUD targeting a proxy?