Racial Profiling on Google?

Are Latanya and Rasheed more likely to be arrested than Greg and Meredith? Yes, if you are using ads on Google as a barometer.

Latanya Sweeney of Harvard created an experiment to find out.

Why the interest? When she Googled her own name, an instant background check ad appeared. It asked "Latanya Sweeney arrested?" 

Excuse us?

Yes, a Harvard professor is more likely to receive an arrest record ad because of her "black-identifying" name. No, she hasn't been arrested. (In case you wondered.)

In the experiment, she sought to find out whether Google's AdSense algorithm's ads were based on the ethnicity of the name searched. She concluded that "a black-identifying name was 25 percent more likely to get an ad suggestive of an arrest record."

Not convinced?

She also found that "there is less than a 0.1 percent probability that these data can be explained by chance."  

Does this reflect racism in society? Or racism in the Google algorithm? Or both? And what does Google have to say for itself?

Google's spokesperson responded by saying,"AdWords does not conduct any racial profiling. We also have an ‘anti’ and violence policy which states that we will not allow ads that advocate against an organisation, person or group of people. It is up to individual advertisers to decide which keywords they want to choose to trigger their ads.”

We're sure that's it. Exactly. 

Let's all Google ourselves and check for our arrest records. Or not. Read more here.