Court Finds Algorithm Bias Studies Don't Violate US Anti-Hacking Law (engadget.com) 52
"A federal court in D.C. has ruled in a lawsuit against Attorney General William Barr that studies aimed at detecting discrimination in online algorithms don't violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act," reports Engadget:
The government argued that the Act made it illegal to violate a site's terms of service through some investigative methods (such as submitting false info for research), but Judge John Bates determined that the terms only raised the possibility of civil liability, not criminal cases.
Bates observed that many sites' terms of service (which are frequently buried, cryptic or both) didn't provide a good-enough notice to make people criminally liable, and that it's problematic for private sites to define criminal liability. The judge also found that the government was using an overly broad interpretation when it's supposed to use a narrow view whenever there's ambiguity.
"Researchers who test online platforms for discriminatory and rights-violating data practices perform a public service," wrote the staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (which filed the suit "on behalf of academic researchers, computer scientists, and journalists who wish to investigate companies' online practices.") "They should not fear federal prosecution for conducting the 21st-century equivalent of anti-discrimination audit testing."
Their announcement notes it's the kind of testing used by journalists "who exposed that advertisers were using Facebook's ad-targeting algorithm to exclude users from receiving job, housing, or credit ads based on race, gender, age, or other classes protected from discrimination in federal and state civil rights laws."
Bates observed that many sites' terms of service (which are frequently buried, cryptic or both) didn't provide a good-enough notice to make people criminally liable, and that it's problematic for private sites to define criminal liability. The judge also found that the government was using an overly broad interpretation when it's supposed to use a narrow view whenever there's ambiguity.
"Researchers who test online platforms for discriminatory and rights-violating data practices perform a public service," wrote the staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union (which filed the suit "on behalf of academic researchers, computer scientists, and journalists who wish to investigate companies' online practices.") "They should not fear federal prosecution for conducting the 21st-century equivalent of anti-discrimination audit testing."
Their announcement notes it's the kind of testing used by journalists "who exposed that advertisers were using Facebook's ad-targeting algorithm to exclude users from receiving job, housing, or credit ads based on race, gender, age, or other classes protected from discrimination in federal and state civil rights laws."
Re:"Were using" (Score:4, Informative)
That's not the case. Facebook's ad targeting is something that the advertiser decides. Read the one about the guy who made an ad-group of just his flatmate and then trolled him with fake ads that specific targeted him as a person, getting more personal and creepy as time went on.
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https://www.facebook.com/busin... [facebook.com]
Re:"Were using" (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, but there isn't a sane business out there that says "exclude Group X even if that means my profit level drops".
Bias may be implicit in the economic targeting, but that's quite different than ad advertiser intentionally specifying it.
Businesses do it all the time. With this kind of thing, if you are targeting middle aged white males you don't tell the advertiser you are looking for "middle aged white males". You specify things like "college educated"(more likely to be white), "drives a corvette/mercedes"(more likely to be middle aged), "doesn't work in education/nursing"(less likely to be female). Geofencing your ads can have the same effect.
But the issue isn't advertising goods. People do this same kind of thing for ads like housing, which is illegal.
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Businesses do it all the time. With this kind of thing, if you are targeting middle aged white males you don't tell the advertiser you are looking for "middle aged white males".
No, no businesses do this. "Never" is a strong word, but yes, essentially never.
Nobody advertises for a particular race or gender or age. They target for whoever can buy the product, and pay the financing.
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Businesses do it all the time. With this kind of thing, if you are targeting middle aged white males you don't tell the advertiser you are looking for "middle aged white males".
No, no businesses do this. "Never" is a strong word, but yes, essentially never.
Nobody advertises for a particular race or gender or age.
Never [wikipedia.org]?
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"Never" as it applies to today. That is, "never" as it applies to current reality.
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"Never" as it applies to today. That is, "never" as it applies to current reality.
That's not what "never" means.
But ok, how about this [nbcnews.com]?
Hell, the Trump administration even charged Facebook for racial discrimination based on housing ads [reuters.com]
Re:"Were using" (Score:4, Informative)
I didn't claim that Facebook isn't responsible for their algorithms, I claimed that advertisers weren't intentionally "using" it to be discriminatory.
From the Reuter's article I linked:
The government charge said Facebook enabled advertisers to exclude people whom the social network’s data classified as parents, non-American-born, non-Christian, or a variety of other interests that closely align with the Fair Housing Act’s protected classes.
This implies that yes, advertisers were specifically using Facebook's targeting tools to be discriminatory. If you're selling something the money from immigrants or Muslims spends just as well as natural born citizens or Muslims, so why would someone exclude them?
Because the profit motive supersedes when we're talking about business, and any manager/executive that was prioritizing their supposed desire to be racist/discriminatory over rational business priorities, would get fired quite quickly.
Sure they do [wikipedia.org].
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If you're selling something the money from immigrants or Muslims spends just as well as natural born citizens or Muslims, so why would someone exclude them?
Because each and every ad costs $$. Businesses these days gather tons of data on the stuff they sell, and they know a great deal about what qualities will make someone 10% more likely to buy a product than someone else. That 10% means the difference in buying the ad (because it's worth the $$) and not buying the ad (because the ad is bought at a loss). "middle-class", "college-educated", "parent" are all qualities that have a *huge* effect on the items that one is likely to buy, and would therefore be
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why would someone exclude them?
Because displaying more ads costs more money. If you are advertising outboard motors, ads targeted at white men may generate enough additional sales to make up for the cost of the ads. If the same ads are also targeted at black men or white women, the return per displayed ad is likely to be less and may be negative.
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because doing so would be stupid.
It is illegal to discriminate against people with kids in housing and employment. But kids are noisy, spill stuff, and break things. Families with kids are often stretched financially and are more likely to fall into arrears on the rent. Many landlords would like to exclude them if they can find a way to do so.
Black people often have poor credit. That may sound racist, but it is reality. Sure, you can run a credit check on an applicant, but that takes time and effort while the apartment is sitting empty.
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Yea we don't have brand names likes "Just for Men", "BET" (Black Entertainment Television), or "AARP" (Association of American Retired Persons)
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Nobody advertises for a particular race or gender or age.
Yes they do, and it is often legal.
"Lady's night" is illegal for establishments serving the public in California, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, but legal in all other states.
Gender discrimination in housing is also legal and common. Go to Craigslist or any classified ad section and you will see ads for "female roommate". The laws on discrimination are much looser for boarders sharing living space than for tenants.
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Your use of the word "also" implausibly claims that "lady's night" is discrimination, but this has been litigated and in all but 4 States it was found not to be gender discrimination.
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it was found not to be gender discrimination.
"Ladies' night" is obviously gender discrimination. It was found to not be ILLEGAL gender discrimination.
Discriminate: Recognize a distinction; differentiate.
Gender discrimination is legal in many areas, including employment and housing. Hooters only hires female waitstaff. Movie studies generally only consider women to play Juliet. Is this discrimination? Of course it is. Is it illegal? No.
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In the UK "female roommate" might be fine because discrimination laws have exceptions for where there is a genuine good reason to need a particular attribute. For example production companies can advertise that they need women for a particular role because the character is a woman, or a men's shelter could advertise for a male carer.
Female roommate might qualify, it would depend on the particular circumstances but for example if it was a small flat with little privacy that would probably be good enough.
Those are *better* targets than race (Score:3)
> You specify things like "college educated"(more likely to be white), "drives a corvette/mercedes"
The thing is, if you're selling something to the kind of people who buy Corvettes, you want your ads I'm front of people who have Corvettes. That's very specific to your market.
the 1940s, if you were putting out ads for roofing anything else for homeowners, one might figure that white people are more likely to own a home and therefore advertise where white people would see your ads. This isn't the 1940s. A
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which is illegal.
This is probably not true. The letter of the law requires "discriminatory intent", or that a "facially neutral" but de facto discriminatory policy isn't "reasonably related" to a legitimate business need [wikipedia.org]. Often, these ads are bought based on some statistical model that has already shown that the variable in question makes it more likely to "sell" their ad, so the proof of "reasonably related" is easily available.
NB, however, that this article isn't about any kind of legal anything... it is simply abo
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People do this same kind of thing for ads like housing, which is illegal.
There are many gray areas.
My city (San Jose) has a Chinese language newspaper. There are plenty of ads for housing (and jobs) in the classifieds. If you can't read Chinese, you aren't going to rent that apartment or get that job.
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Depends on your criteria for sanity. People do self-defeating things all the time because of prejudice. Obviously they don't *think* they're doing that. They sincerely do believe that blacks are less trustworthy or Jews will reduce their property values.
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They sincerely do believe that blacks are less trustworthy or Jews will reduce their property values.
I'll have to encounter a few of these people, to have evidence of it. I work in downtown Detroit, and have yet to do so.
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I've actually worked for CEOs like that. I got in trouble once for telling the boss that we should stop trying to change the composition of our customer base and put the money instead into the groups where additional sales were easy to make on a marginal-dollar basis.
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For most products, we normally don't want to exclude people. Even Religious based companies like Chick-Fil-A and Hobie Lobby will happily take money from people who they are at different degrees they do not generally like to see in society. Because money is money.
That said, there are some upscale services that the business owners want to keep the "riff-raff" out. Mostly people who will enter the store and not buy a thing, or take advantage of the complementary services. You are not going to sell a million-d
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Do you have a link for that? I couldn't find anything after a bit of searching but it sounds like a fun read.
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I think that this is the story mentioned. If it is then you can't have searched because it was the first thing that came up in my first search of "guy trolls roommate with targeted Facebook ads".
http://ghostinfluence.com/the-... [ghostinfluence.com]
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If it is then you can't have searched because it was the first thing that came up in my first search of "guy trolls roommate with targeted Facebook ads".
Thanks for the link. I didn't realise your description was literally the title, so those weren't the exact words I used in my search.
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Do you think they didn't have active intent? That they didn't find these subtler forms of discrimination useful because they were nominally legal, and yet provided the same selection bias? It's understandable: it can save a great deal of money to discriminate based on age, health, and gender.
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Nowhere did I suggest that they ignore economics. The _failure_ to apply gender bias, age bias, and in some cases racial bias is deliberately ignoring objective economics in the name of "fairness". You define ignoring those factors it as insane? That is your privilege as a private person. But it would be illegal as an employer, according to the Civial Rights Act of 1964 and numerous laws passed since then. That conflict is why an employer might choose to find a way _around_ the law, to use those social medi
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Yeah, that ACLU claim seems overblown. Some decision in regard to audience makes sense in advertising, and should hardly be considered discrimination. After all, I don't recall ever seeing "job, housing, or credit ads" on Nickelodeon. Should someone be liable for targeting children with toy ads? Should I sue because I get ads in the mail for Spanish-language cable programming solely because I have a Spanish last name?
At least the judge's decision in general seems just:
Bates observed that many sites' terms of service (which are frequently buried, cryptic or both) didn't provide a good-enough notice to make people criminally liable, and that it's problematic for private sites to define criminal liability. The judge also found that the government was using an overly broad interpretation when it's supposed to use a narrow view whenever there's ambiguity.
It's nice to see good, logical thinking
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Don't think that just because it makes sense from a business point of view, it should run uninhibited.
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"Were using" implies deliberate intent, which also implies that the advertisers had active input into the algorithm. In all likelihood, the advertisers simply said "give me the best return on my advertising dollar", and the responsibility for the rest, whatever it may be, lies with Facebook.
Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest%3F [wikipedia.org]
Re:Why include race in the input? (Score:5, Informative)
If racial bias is so prevalent in these algorithms why not just stop including it as an input? If the algorithm doesnâ(TM)t know what race is it canâ(TM)t have bias.
Often times race isn't an input but there are proxy variables. Things such as education level, income level, home ownership, and even geographical location can correlate well enough with race to effectively limit your target. Discriminating based on these characteristics isn't illegal but can indicate illegal intent.
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More to the point, this was Barr's attempt to institutionalize discrimination. Fortunately it got reject this time. He'll be back though with another attempt.
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isn't illegal but can indicate illegal intent.
That doesn't sound like wrong think at all.
Wrong citation? (Score:2)
Um, shouldn't Facebook have mentioned the TOS instead of the Hacking Law?
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Um, shouldn't Facebook have mentioned the TOS instead of the Hacking Law?
i'm also puzzled at this. all this discussion about discrimination around is completely irrelevant to ... people giving false information to private sites?
i do that systematically, private sites have no business with my information other than i strictly need them to have, which is very little, period. if i want to be an octopus or a little girl living in tasmania for them then that's what i am for them. so i break the tos? ok, then suspend my account or whatever and cry me a river. but a lawsuit for hacking
So, it is a poorly-written law... (Score:3)
So, it is a poorly-written law — ambiguous, and allowing for malicious prosecution and other forms of abuse-of-process.
"Bias studies" are glorious, so they get a pass — while someone like "Project Veritas" would've had the book thrown at them [thehill.com].
Law-makers should be required to take a programming course...
Fuck Zuck (Score:1)
"republicandipshit" tag (Score:3, Informative)
So, this story is currently tagged "republicandipshit." Of course, the ACLU notes that this lawsuit was filed in June of 2016 [aclu.org] when that arch republican Loretta Lynch was the AG.
Hyper partisan and ignorant are a bad combination, no matter which side of the aisle you're on.