Google previously prohibited advertisers from choosing (representational) ad targets
Oakland, California:
Alphabet Inc.’s Google said on Thursday that it is fighting illegal discrimination by preventing housing, job and credit ads from being targeted to its users based on their zip code, gender, age, parental status or state marital.
The new policy, which takes effect at the end of the year in the United States and Canada, comes more than a year after the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) accused Facebook Inc of selling discriminatory real estate ads and said it was considering similar concerns regarding Google and Twitter Inc.
Google and Facebook together account for just over half of the world‘s Internet ad sales, which makes their political actions influential in the industry.
American protests following the death of George Floyd, an African American who died in police custody in Minneapolis, have highlighted racial inequalities, including the difficulties faced by blacks in finding employment and housing. But Google said its new policy was not a reaction to the protests.
“We have been working constructively with HUD on these issues since last year, and our schedule has not been determined by current events,” said Google spokesperson Elijah Lawal.
In a press release on Thursday, HUD encouraged other online ad sellers to follow Google’s action. Twitter said it had no policy updates to share.
Google previously prohibited advertisers from choosing ad targets based on the race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation of users. But researchers investigating discrimination said that advertisers could still use other data to exclude low-income individuals and racial minorities from their potential customers.
For example, postal codes, which refer to geography, could be a proxy for race, because people of the same origin sometimes congregate in neighborhoods.
Facebook has banned advertisers from using zip codes, age and gender to decide who would see the ad a few days before HUD took action last year. The company and US attorneys said the case, which had been referred to a New York federal court, was ongoing.
(Reporting by Paresh Dave; Editing by Dan Grebler and Stephen Coates)
(This story has not been edited by GalacticGaming staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
