Meta Reviews Technology That Prevents Ads For Discrimination On Its Platform

Meta is again trying to reduce ad discrimination on its platform. (photo: dock. meta)

JAKARTA - Meta is again working to reduce advertising discrimination on its platform by launching a Variance Reduction System (VRS). This technology also serves to increase equitable distribution of ads according to audience interests across Meta apps.

VRS can measure the actual reach of the audience according to the target for each ad, ensuring wider spread based on various audience factors, and should not lean towards certain cultural groups or be unfair.

Using machine learning, VRS will compare audience aggregate demographics with the demographics that marketers want to reach. Then change the value of advertising auctions to show them more often or more rarely to certain groups. Meta says VRS will continue to work during ad view.

The method builds with increased additional privacy including differential privacy, a technique that can help protect against individual reidentification in aggregated datasets, Meta said in its announcement on its official blog.

Differential privacy comes as Meta is aware of potential privacy concerns, which emphasizes the system cannot see the age, gender, or ethnicity of a person. As well as preventing AI from learning individual demographic information from time to time.

Initially, the VRS would be applied to housing ads encouraging settlements in the United States (US). It is not known for sure whether Meta will also launch it globally. VRS will achieve credit advertising and jobs in the country over the following year.

VRS technology emerged after more than a year of cooperation with the Department of Justice and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

For information, Meta (formerly Facebook) was indicted in 2019 for allowing discrimination in residential advertisements by allowing advertisers to exclude certain demographics, including those protected by the Fair Housing Act.

In the settlement of June 2022, the social media giant will deploy the VRS and remove the Special Ad Audience tool, in which its algorithm is suspected of causing discrimination. Meta has limited its ad targeting in 2019 in response to other lawsuits.

In this case, according to Engadget, Tuesday, January 10, Meta is not alone in blocking discriminatory advertising. Google has banned advertisers from targeting credit, housing and work ads from 2020.