As we use Facebook, and other sites/ apps, we are giving up information about ourselves both consciously and unconsciously. For example we consciously provide them with information such as our name, age, birthdate and more… However as we use these platforms our actions give a pretty good idea about who we are. Based on who we are friends with, which posts we like and what pages we follow, Facebook’s complex algorithms can group us into some of their near 50,000 different categories also known as target groups. These groups play a huge role in helping and enticing marketers to advertise on Facebook. These categories would allow a marketer to decide exactly which people they want to reach in their marketing campaign. It is easy to see how this can be extremely helpful to a business looking to reach a specific audience.

As great as the system sounds there is an issue present. The problem is that one of the categories “ethnic affinity” groups individuals into different groups including African American, Asian American and hispanic.  As pointed out in Chynelle’s presentation, being placed in a certain ethnic affinity group would just mean that your account is  associated with the race or culture based on your Facebook use. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you are of that race or ethnicity. At first I didn’t fully understand how the system worked. I was under the impression that when placing an ad, you would choose a group you wanted to target and post it. So say for example I wanted to reach an audience of Asian Americans, I would simply choose that ethnic affinity group and post my ad. After Nicolette’s presentation, I got a better understanding of just how it works. It wasn’t as simple as just choose a group you want to target, there was also the option of choose which group you want to exclude. To me the idea of being able to specifically exclude a group just based on their ethnicity or culture sure sounds like discrimination. (of course there are cases where this could be helpful for example  like what Jane pointed out in class – when it comes to certain beauty products that are designed for different people)

In class a few arguments arose including 1. As a marketer I have the right to target the people I feel will be most beneficial to my cause and 2. Facebook isn’t being discriminatory, it’s just providing for the ability for someone else to be. The presentations did a great job at remaining unbiased.  When it comes to selling product I can understand how a category such as ethnic affinity might be beneficial to marketers (as mentioned earlier), however in the case of housing and credit I find it pretty irrelevant what ethnicity someone is unless you are looking to discriminate.  As much as I believe Facebook didn’t mean to be discriminatory I find it hard to believe that they didn’t realize what was going on and how it would be seen as discriminatory. “Discriminatory advertising has no place on Facebook,” (Erin Egan Facebook’s vice president of U.S. public policy and chief privacy officer)  With that said, I do believe Facebook is at fault for providing the ability to do this in the first place. The same argument is used to say that youtube for example provides a platform for potential copyright infringement. The difference is that Facebook is going out of there way to put people into these groups and then present it as an option to a potential marketer. It is very possible that in the moment a marketer might decide to exclude certain types of people simply because they can. At the end of the day there are enough other categories to narrow your audience down without discrimination. I don’t really see much added benefit of filtering based on ethnicity or ethnic affinity.

In the end Facebook did come out and say that they are going to “disable the use of ethnic affinity marketing for ads that we identify as offering housing, employment, or credit.”  Facebook also said it is going to make sure that advertisers use their platform in the proper manner and do not use it for discriminatory practices. I like the way Facebook has reacted to the situation and how they plan on preventing this from happening again in the future.