edit: I was too brief in the intro here; this comment is meant to provide additional context on how others (namely, Reuters) have interpreted Sweeney's work and is not meant as a judgment of the actual study itself.
It's funny ("funny", as in, it was a confusing coincidence, not as in, the study is suspicious) that the OP mentions the ad-delivery on Reuters.com.
I tried it out for myself using the professor's name and got this massive correction note to a December Reuters story involving her study (the correction was so major that the story has been removed from Reuters archive:
(Reuters) - Please be advised that a November 25 article reporting that Instantcheckmate.com's advertising relies on racial profiling has been withdrawn. The story, "Professor finds profiling in ads for personal data website," contains errors.
The headline of the article and the article itself incorrectly assert that Harvard Professor Latanya Sweeney's research showed that Instantcheckmate.com, an online background research website, had engaged in racial profiling in its advertisements.
Sweeney says the preliminary results of the research found "significant discrimination" in Instantcheckmate.com's online ad search results, but were insufficient for the article's assertion of deliberate racial profiling by Instant Checkmate. Her research is ongoing. Instant Checkmate denies any such activity, which it describes as being at odds with the company's values. The company says further that it hasn't seen Sweeney's research.
There will be no substitute story.
---
This doesn't have any bearing on the legitimacy of the OP's summation of Ms. Sweeney's work, just that her work has been written about before, and apparently, easily misinterpreted by the media.
edit: If you want to read the pulled-Reuters story, this appears to be a copy of it:
The Reuters story focused more on Instantcheckmate.com's practices and apparently made too strong of a conclusion. Strangely, the author of the piece, a Reuters corespondent, is also a Harvard fellow who is collaborating with Sweeney for a book.
A quick reading of your post suggests that there is some reason to dismiss Prof. Sweeney's findings as discussed in the posted article (massive correction, easily misinterpreted, etc.) However, this is not the case. It is very clear from OP that unless Prof. Sweeney has falsified her data or described the findings incorrectly - something you have managed to imply deniably without actually showing it - the site is in fact targeting the 'arrest' variant of the ads at queries with black names in them.
Read danso's post again, the problem isn't with Prof. Sweeney's research, the problem is with the Reuters story that jumped the gun and came to a conclusion that Sweeney hadn't. As a result, the correction note was attached to the Reuters article not Sweeney's research.
(I had the same reaction you did when first reading the post, but when I re-read it, I realized what it was saying. The post could have been clearer though.)
I can see why you'd infer that from my wording, but FWIW, I'm not intending to imply anything against Prof. Sweeney's work as I've not yet read the actual study. I was posting what I had found when trying the searches myself; for some reason, Google isn't serving me any ads...and Reuters served me what I had posted above.
If anything, this post is directed at commenters who have reflexively dismissed the study because they dislike the OP's summation. Just because the article summarizing the study may jump to a contentious conclusion does not mean that the study itself did. The fact that Reuters apparently messed up here is just an example of how a study with possible controversial implications can be misread by someone trying to write about it.
Comments
edit: I was too brief in the intro here; this comment is meant to provide additional context on how others (namely, Reuters) have interpreted Sweeney's work and is not meant as a judgment of the actual study itself.
It's funny ("funny", as in, it was a confusing coincidence, not as in, the study is suspicious) that the OP mentions the ad-delivery on Reuters.com.
I tried it out for myself using the professor's name and got this massive correction note to a December Reuters story involving her study (the correction was so major that the story has been removed from Reuters archive:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/13/us-usa-internet-pr...
(Reuters) - Please be advised that a November 25 article reporting that Instantcheckmate.com's advertising relies on racial profiling has been withdrawn. The story, "Professor finds profiling in ads for personal data website," contains errors.
The headline of the article and the article itself incorrectly assert that Harvard Professor Latanya Sweeney's research showed that Instantcheckmate.com, an online background research website, had engaged in racial profiling in its advertisements.
Sweeney says the preliminary results of the research found "significant discrimination" in Instantcheckmate.com's online ad search results, but were insufficient for the article's assertion of deliberate racial profiling by Instant Checkmate. Her research is ongoing. Instant Checkmate denies any such activity, which it describes as being at odds with the company's values. The company says further that it hasn't seen Sweeney's research.
There will be no substitute story.
---
This doesn't have any bearing on the legitimacy of the OP's summation of Ms. Sweeney's work, just that her work has been written about before, and apparently, easily misinterpreted by the media.
edit: If you want to read the pulled-Reuters story, this appears to be a copy of it:
http://technewthings.blogspot.com/2012/11/reuters-technology...
The Reuters story focused more on Instantcheckmate.com's practices and apparently made too strong of a conclusion. Strangely, the author of the piece, a Reuters corespondent, is also a Harvard fellow who is collaborating with Sweeney for a book.
A quick reading of your post suggests that there is some reason to dismiss Prof. Sweeney's findings as discussed in the posted article (massive correction, easily misinterpreted, etc.) However, this is not the case. It is very clear from OP that unless Prof. Sweeney has falsified her data or described the findings incorrectly - something you have managed to imply deniably without actually showing it - the site is in fact targeting the 'arrest' variant of the ads at queries with black names in them.
Read danso's post again, the problem isn't with Prof. Sweeney's research, the problem is with the Reuters story that jumped the gun and came to a conclusion that Sweeney hadn't. As a result, the correction note was attached to the Reuters article not Sweeney's research.
(I had the same reaction you did when first reading the post, but when I re-read it, I realized what it was saying. The post could have been clearer though.)
I can see why you'd infer that from my wording, but FWIW, I'm not intending to imply anything against Prof. Sweeney's work as I've not yet read the actual study. I was posting what I had found when trying the searches myself; for some reason, Google isn't serving me any ads...and Reuters served me what I had posted above.
If anything, this post is directed at commenters who have reflexively dismissed the study because they dislike the OP's summation. Just because the article summarizing the study may jump to a contentious conclusion does not mean that the study itself did. The fact that Reuters apparently messed up here is just an example of how a study with possible controversial implications can be misread by someone trying to write about it.