But the vast majority of the ads exchanged online are commercial, not political.
We know our personal data is collected to support targeted advertising in a way thatviolates our privacy.
These questions motivatedour recent research.
But online consumers are isolated because the information they see is limited to what is targeted at them.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
Due to the sheer volume of ads exchanged online, human supervisors cannot vet each campaign.
But these predictions can bebiased, and they typically only ban the clearest violations.
Among the many ads that pass these controls, a significant portion still contains potentially harmful content.
Traditionally, advertising standards authorities have taken a reactive approach to regulate advertising, relying upon consumer complaints.
Many commuterscomplained, saying that it promoted harmful stereotypes.
Shortly after, the ad wasbannedand apublic probeinto socially responsible advertising was launched.
Regulating adverts
The Protein World case illustrates how regulators work.
Protein World’s controversial Are You Beach Body Ready?
This raises the question: what about all the others?
Targeted ads can also harm by omission.
Machine learning algorithms are bad at identifying contextual harms.
On the contrary, the way targeting works actually amplifies them.
Severalaudits, for example, have uncovered how Facebook has alloweddiscriminatory targetingthat worsens socioeconomic inequalities.
Because of personalized targeting, each of us sees different ads.
This makes us more vulnerable.
Currently, regulators are adopting a combination of two strategies to address these challenges.
First, we see an increasing focus oneducating consumersto give them control over how theyre targeted.
Second, theres a push towards monitoring ad campaigns proactively, automating screening mechanisms before ads are published online.
Both of these strategies are too limited.
Our research shows its not just political targeting that produces harm commercial targeting requires our attention too.
