Facebook Announces Changes to “Ethnic Affinity” Marketing
This morning, Facebook announced major changes to its “Ethnic Affinity” targeting program. The company will stop allowing advertisers to target ads for offers of housing, employment, or credit using the ethnic affinity marketing categories. It will also update its Advertising Policies to be more explicit about advertisers’ legal obligations not to discriminate against those in protected classes.
This news demonstrates the value of dialogue and the power of technology to improve the world we live in.
Civil rights leaders in government and civil society have expressed concern about the potential for “Ethnic Affinity” marketing to enable violations of discrimination law. CDT proposed a number of solutions in a blog post earlier this week, and we are pleased that Facebook took action to implement some of our suggestions. These changes will improve Facebook’s platform and protect its users from the worst types of discriminatory advertising. We’ll continue to work with Facebook to increase transparency and further protect users from discriminatory ads that do not fall under the umbrella of civil rights laws.
This news also demonstrates the value of dialogue and the power of technology to improve the world we live in. Technology companies like Facebook host millions of people every day, and the design of their platforms can determine the opportunities provided to people. Journalists, government leaders, and civil society all play a part in questioning how technology influences opportunity, and this was a great example of how we can work together to help companies do better. Changes like those Facebook announced this morning have an immediate impact on the dignity of all users by promoting respect and helping to enforce the expectations of fairness established in civil rights laws. CDT will continue to work with companies and all stakeholders to promote inclusion and diversity through innovative solutions that embed human rights into technology and ensure that legal protections extend to digital environments.
To learn more about Facebook’s “Ethnic Affinity” program and our recommendations to fix it, please see our blog post describing how the categorization works and our analysis of possible solutions.
Coalition Urges Senate Not to Let Companies Waive Financial Regulations for AI
CDT joined AI Now Institute, American Civil Liberties Union, and several organizations dedicated to tech policy, consumer protection, and civil rights in a letter to Senate leadership and the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee opposing the “AI Innovation Labs” language in Sec. 10509 of the CLARITY Act.
As concern about risks and harms related to AI systems continue to grow, a growing chorus of policymakers, industry leaders, and advocates have called for independent AI assessments. This explainer provides an overview of recent proposals for third-party assessment in the United States, including state and federal legislation, executive actions, and industry proposals.
Having third parties assess AI systems might seem like common sense, but crafting effective policies toward this goal can be devilishly tricky. A poorly-constructed ecosystem for third-party assessment could easily fail to consider the most consequential mechanisms of risk, neglect the AI harms that most impact people, or do more to protect AI companies than people.
Not All Guardrails Are Created Equal: Comparing Content Safety and Copyright Filtering
As courts and policymakers work through questions about chatbot liability, they should be wary of analogies that flatten meaningful technical differences. Copyright filtering and safety intervention share real challenges around ambiguity and evasion, but they diverge in what each control must assess, how each manifests over the course of a conversation, and how much can be verified from the outside.
