Discrimination in Online Ad Delivery: Google ads, black names and white names, racial discrimination, and click advertising
Open accessAbstract
Do online ads suggestive of arrest records appear more often with searches of black-sounding names than white-sounding names? What is a black-sounding name or white-sounding name, anyway? How many more times would an ad have to appear adversely affecting one racial group for it to be considered discrimination? Is online activity so ubiquitous that computer scientists have to think about societal consequences such as structural racism in technology design? If so, how is this technology to be built? Let’s take a scientific dive into online ad delivery to find answers.
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The history of digital technology shows that broader scrutiny, including by marginalized groups that experience harm most acutely, reveals concerns missed by developers.
“The history of digital technology demonstrates that broader scrutiny, including by those belonging to marginalized groups that experience harm most acutely, reveals concerns missed by developers (Sweeney, 2013;Noble, 2018;Buolamwini & Gebru, 2018;Raji & Buolamwini, 2019).”
From On the Societal Impact of Open Foundation Models (2024) · cites this paper as Sweeney, 2013
In “THE PATTERN” (page unavailable), Sweeney describes investigating arrest-suggestive ads associated with Black-identifying names; the conclusion reports that technology can foster discriminatory outcomes. The paper supports the example of scrutiny revealing racial harm, but it does not establish the broader historical claim or say that participation by marginalized groups revealed concerns developers had missed. (LLM, conf=0.82)
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- Authors
- Sweeney, L.
- Affiliations
- Harvard University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Sweeney, Latanya
- ORCID
- Sweeney, Latanya
- Venue
- Queue
- Published
- 2013-03
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 10-29
- ISSN
- 1542-7730 (ISSN-L)
- 1542-7749
- OpenAlex
- W2953001331
- Cited by
- 477
- References
- 14
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 42 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 55 · 2022: 37 · 2021: 53 · 2020: 51 · 2019: 100 · 2018: 31 · 2017: 28 · 2016: 16 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 7 · 2013: 5
- FWCI
- 29.08
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Queue (publishedVersion)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (publishedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion)
- arXiv (Cornell University)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (1237235)
- Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Names, Identity, and Discrimination Research
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Law, Rights, and Freedoms
- Keywords
- algorithmic discrimination, online advertising, Google AdSense, racial bias, name-based discrimination, arrest records, public records, search engine advertising, algorithmic fairness
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