Facebook developers have found a way to predict your ethnicity, based on your name. According to SmartBlog, FB pros are using U.S. Census data to use your first and last name to decide the likelihood of your race.
For example, if a FB user's last name is Mueller, Census data says that person's ethnicity has a 97% chance of being White. But if the user has the first name LaToya, than that person is most likely Black. Another interesting name, Washington actually showed a 89% chance of being Black.
By applying their predictions of ethnicity to users’ friend networks, the team found:
The ethnic makeup of Facebook users has steadily become more diverse and now generally reflects the U.S. population, unlike a few years ago, when Caucasians and Asian/Pacific Islanders were over-represented.
- Users are more likely to be friends with, and communicate most often with, people of the same ethnicity.
- Users are more likely to be in romantic relationships with people of the same ethnicity.
- Particular ethnic groups tend to behave similarly online, with Asian/Pacific Islanders engaging in “unexpectedly high number of wall, video, note, gift, comment and group-sharing actions.”
What will they use this data for? Most likely to sell research reporting statistics. But let's not kid ourselves. There is also a highly likely chance that Facebook will use this newly discovered info to help place more targeted advertising based on ethnicity.
What do you think? Is it OK to use unauthorized ethnic user data to advertise to Facebook users?
Undeniably, racial profiling and/or ethnic stereotypes have infiltrated American society with a scary acceptance from the general public. Now, ethnicity-based judgmental behavior is being used to target a 'new' source of advertising? If a company advertises Asian food to Asians that is not ethnically improper. But if that company blindly advertises Asian food to a Name because of some presumptuous data that suggests the Name belongs to an Asian person, that might be pushing the boundaries a bit too far for some people. The other main issue is how does anyone justify using such data to any means if there are certainly going to be exceptions to its pretty-high accuracy. Facebook users who are bi-racial or mixed may be subject to assumptive identity judgments. Advertising through use of unauthorized ethnic user data may not sound too offensive..but it will offend someone..and for a company such as Facebook, reputation brings growth just as swiftly as it can reap termination.
ReplyDelete