Difference between revisions of "Digital Privacy associated with advertisements"
| Line 7: | Line 7: | ||
<br> | <br> | ||
<br> | <br> | ||
| − | + | Internet Advertising is closely associated with Digital Privacy these days. | |
<br> | <br> | ||
<br> | <br> | ||
Revision as of 21:35, 22 January 2022
Digital privacy is often used in contexts that promote advocacy on behalf of individual and consumer privacy rights in e-services and is typically used in opposition to the business practices of many e-marketers, businesses, and companies to collect and use such information and data. [1] Entering Internet Age, digital security and privacy become more closely related to every individual.
Advertising is a marketing communication that employs an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote or sell a product, service or idea. Sponsors of advertising are typically businesses wishing to promote their products or services.
[2] Advertising changes its form in time. In the Internet Age, business gradually switch their advertisement from traditional media to new media, social media advertising for example. The main internet advertisement companies include Alphabet Inc. (Google, YouTube) and Meta Platforms Inc. (Facebook, Instagram).
Internet Advertising is closely associated with Digital Privacy these days.
Contents
Privacy And Data Gathering
The ethical issue of privacy is also highly relevant to the concept of algorithms. Information transparency [3] is an import point regarding these issues. In popular social media algorithms, user information is often probed without the knowledge of the individual, and this can lead to problems. It is often not transparent enough how these algorithms receive user data, resulting in often incorrect information which can affect both how a person is treated within social media, as well as how outside agents could view these individuals given false data. Algorithms can also often infringe on a user’s feelings of privacy, as data can be collected that a person would prefer to be private. Data brokers are in the business of collecting peoples in formation and selling it to anyone for a profit, like data brokers companies often have their own collection of data. In 2013, Yahoo was hacked, leading to the leak of data pertaining to approximately three billion users.[4] The information leaked contained data relating to usernames, passwords, as well as dates of birth. Privacy and data gathering are common ethical dilemmas relating to algorithms and are often not considered thoroughly enough by algorithm’s users.
Advertisement Case studies
YouTube Radicalization
Scholar and technosociologist Zeynep Tufekci has claimed that "YouTube may be one of the most powerful radicalizing instruments of the 21st century."[5] As YouTube algorithms aim maximize the amount of time that viewers spend watching, it inevitably discovered that the best way to do this was to show videos that slowly "up the stakes" of the subject being watched - from jogging to ultramarathons, from vegetarianism to veganism, from Trump speeches to white supremacist rants.[5] Thus, while the intention of Youtube is to keep viewers watching (and bring in advertisement money), they have unintentionally created a site that shows viewers more and more extreme content - contributing to radicalization. Such activity circles back to and produce filters and echo chambers.
Facebook Advertising
By taking a closer look at Facebook's algorithm that serves up ads to its users, gender and racial bias is obviously prominent. Using demographic and racial background as factors, Facebook's decides which ads are served up to its users. A team from Northeastern tested to see the algorithm bias in action and by running identical ads with slight tweaks to budget, images, and headings, the ads reached vastly different audiences. Results such as minorities receiving a higher percentage of low-cost housing ads, and women receiving more ads for secretary and nursing jobs [6]. Although the intent of Facebook may be to reach people that these ads are intended for, the companies that are signing up to advertise with Facebook have stated they did not anticipate this type of filtering when paying for their services. Additionally, although Facebook may believe it is win-win for everyone since advertisers will be getting more interactions with certain audiences targeted, and people will be happy to see ads more relatable to them shown, it is incredibly discriminatory to target people based on factors that are uncontrollable. Facebook needs to adjust its targeted advertising practices by removing racial and gender factors in their algorithms in order to prevent perpetuating stereotypes and placing people in certain boxes by race and gender. This type of algorithm goes against many ethical principles and is important that powerful technology companies are not setting poor examples for others.
Ethical Concerns
References
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_privacy#:~:text=Digital%20privacy%20is%20often%20used,use%20such%20information%20and%20data.
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising
- ↑ Turilli, Matteo, and Luciano Floridi (2009). "The Ethics of Information Transparency." Ethics and Information Technology. 11(2): 105-112. doi:10.1007/s10676-009-9187-9.
- ↑ Griffin, Andrew (October 4, 2017) "Yahoo Admits It Accidentally Leaked the Personal Details of Half the People on Earth." The Independent. Retrieved April 28, 2019.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 [1] Tufekci, Zeynep. “YouTube, the Great Radicalizer.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 Mar. 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/03/10/opinion/sunday/youtube-politics-radical.html.
- ↑ Hao, Karen. “Facebook's Ad-Serving Algorithm Discriminate by Gender and Race.” MIT Technology Review, 5 Apr. 2019, www.technologyreview.com/.
