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WF-W29ZAW

Google AdSense shows arrest ads more for black-sounding names

A study by Latanya Sweeney found that Google's AdSense system delivered ads suggestive of arrest records disproportionately for names associated with Black individuals compared to white-associated names. The study analysed 2184 racially associated names across two websites. Google maintained that it received the same ad text for groups of last names, but the cause of the disparity remains unknown.

Date it happened
2013-01-01
Organisation involved
Google
Product, system or model
Google AdSense
Where this came from
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Attribution

This incident was imported from dataprivacylab.org. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.

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