Content Moderation Case Study: Google's Ad Policies Inadvertently Block Religious Organizations From Advertising On YouTube (2019)
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Summary: Google's ad service offers purchasers access to millions of users, including those viewing videos on YouTube. But its policies -- meant to prevent abuse, fraud, harassment, or targeting of certain demographics -- sometimes appear to prevent legitimate organizations from doing something as simple as informing others of their existence.Chad Robichaux, the founder of Christian veterans support nonprofit Mighty Oaks, wanted to reach out to veterans who might need his services. But his attempt to purchase YouTube ads was rejected by Google's Ad service for a seemingly strange reason.According to a screenshot posted by Robichaux to Twitter, Google forbade the use of "Christian" as a keyword. To Robichaux (and many responders to his tweet), this was evidence of Big Tech's bias against Christians and conservatives.But the real reason for this block was far less censorial or nefarious, if no more explicable. According to YouTube (which reached out directly to Robicheaux), the aim isn't to keep Christians from advertising, but rather to prevent advertisers from targeting users on the basis of their religion. Unfortunately, Google's policy doesn't exactly make that clear, instead stating that ads cannot contain "religious basis" content if the purchaser is engaging in personalized advertising.Decisions to be made by Google:- Does blocking certain keywords make some ads impossible to place, no matter what audience is targeted or where the content may appear?
- Is it ok for advertisers to target these groups if the users have already self-identified as being members of these groups? Would it be ok if users could explicitly opt in to being targeted in this way?
- Is clarification or simplification of the rules needed to ensure accidental blocking or further misunderstandings are avoided?
- Should advertisers be given more guidance on how to craft ads/seek users to prevent violations?
Questions and policy implications to consider:- Does having control of a majority of the advertising market lower the quality of assistance users receive from Google given the limited options available to them elsewhere?
- Does increasing the number of keyword restrictions result in fewer successful ad placements and lower ad sales?
- Does "protecting" users from personalized ads using certain keywords result in users see more irrelevant ads?
Resolution: The confusion was (somewhat) cleared up by YouTube's direct contact with the concerned ad buyer. But other confusion still remains since the policies guiding ad purchasing/ad construction are far from straightforward. Allegations of bias were off-base. Instead, it was simply Google enforcing its policies, which would have made it equally impossible to use any other religion as a keyword.Originally posted on the Trust & Safety Foundation website.
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posted at: 12:00am on 13-Mar-2021
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What Stevie Ray Vaughan Can Teach Us About Security Design
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The SolarWind intrusion, with the revelation that part of the architecture included, at least for a while, a really weak default password, and the hack of the water treatment plant with a similar password reuse problem, reminded me of this story I heard not long ago about another instance of poor security design.In a recent fan Q&A on Facebook, Bill Gibson, the drummer for Huey Lewis and the News, told a story about his friendship with Stevie Ray Vaughan. Stevie Ray Vaughan and his band Double Trouble had opened for the News for a while in the mid-1980s, and in that time Bill and Stevie had become good friends. Back at the hotel one evening after a show in New York City it came up that Bill had seen Jimi Hendrix perform something like seven times. Stevie, a guitarist who idolized Hendrix, was in awe. He wanted to hear everything about what it was like seeing Hendrix play, so he grabbed some beer and they settled in for an evening of Bill telling Stevie everything he remembered.By 3:00 AM they were out of beer, so they went down to Stevie's tour bus parked out in front of the hotel to get some more. He opened the bus with his key and started looking for the cooler he kept it in. "That's odd," Bill recalls Stevie musing, "The cooler is usually kept in this spot over here." Eventually he found a cooler elsewhere, removed the needed beer, and they left to go back up to finish their conversation.The next day they discovered why they'd had trouble finding the cooler. At the time, most bands were touring in buses that all came from the same company. That all looked the same. And that all were opened by the exact same key. Thus the reason that Stevie could not find the cooler where he expected it to be was because they were not on the bus where they expected to be. Instead of being on Stevie's bus, it turns out they were actually on UB40's bus that, unbeknownst to them, had just pulled up that night while they'd been ensconced in the hotel talking. Which Stevie's key had opened. And on which the UB40 band had apparently been sleeping the whole time Stevie and Bill were there inadvertently pilfering their beerSo let this story be a lesson to security designers, people who really should be employing security designers, and pretty much everyone else who likes to reuse their passwords: When the security credentials for one resource can be used to gain access elsewhere, especially in a way you did not anticipate, there's really not that much security to be had.And in most such cases it will likely be so much more than UB40's beer that's now been put at risk.
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posted at: 12:00am on 13-Mar-2021
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