Here's the Solution to Google's Racial Profiling Problem

Google (GOOG) shows Gmail users different ads based on the perceived race of the account holder, presumably because Adwords clients are racially profiling their customers, according to a study. The small, anecdotal test by Nathan Newman of Tech-Progress found that stereotypically white, black and Muslim names all returned different advertising clients.

The biased ads are likely a result of the racism of Google's advertisers, expressed in the keywords they chose to generate their ads, not the Adwords algorithm itself (although that would be news). The question becomes, why does Google allow this?

In the study, a Gmail user named "Connor Erickson" typing "Arrested; need a lawyer" into the subject line of a new email gets whistleblower attorney come-ons and, oddly, offshore help-wanted ads for oil producer BP. But "DeShawn Washington," typing the same email, generates ads for DUI lawyers. The same test in which the users type "Buying a car" into Gmail generates a "Bad Credit Auto Loans" ad for DeShawn but a BMW ad for "Jake Yoder":

Results also changed based on location, with names yielding Lexus ads in some locales but Toyota and car-lift ads in the South Bronx.

Google has a history of "allowing" racist material to dominate its search results, which the company says it will not act to stop. When you type in a phrase such as "why do black," the autofill function of Google's search engine suggests racist search queries such as "... people stink" and "... people like fried chicken." The results are bizarre and shocking, but they persist. This screengrab was taken on Sept. 21:

Google's explanation is that search results of any kind are generated by the record of previous searches, existing content on the Internet, and the popularity of that content as indicated by other users. Google isn't racist, in other words, it merely returns racist results because its users are. This issue became a big deal during the last presidential election when one of the top image search results for Michelle Obama was an image of her depicted as a monkey. Google's advertisers have historically been oddly passive about allowing their ads to run on YouTube (also owned by Google) in content that contains the n-word.

In terms of search results, it's hard to see how Google could stop such racism without engaging in an impossibly laborious, word-by-word act of censorship. But the advertising side is different. While Google has millions of advertisers and cannot police the keywords they buy (because the system is automated), it could make them click affirmatively on a non-discrimination promise when they buy those ads. Any advertiser caught racially profiling customers could then be banned from the service. Problem solved.

Your move, Google.

Related:

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