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Almost a decade ago, Safiya Noble ( @safiyanoble) wrote about how searching for one’s identity on Google can return a slew of pornographic results. In 2018, Noble wrote an entire book on the topic called “Algorithms of Oppression.”
Similarly, Latanya Sweeney ( @LatanyaSweeney) found that Google AdWords was 80 percent more likely to advertise arrest records for searches of traditionally Black names compared to traditionally White names.
. @ASankin and I build off their foundational work in our latest @themarkup investigation into Google Ad’s Keyword Planner. The Keyword Planner is an essential tool for advertisers to build keyword lists for advertising campaigns.
We found Keyword Planner recommended hundreds of sexualized terms for “Black girls” and “Asian boys”, but none whatsoever for “White girls” and “White boys.”
Google identified almost half of the recommended keywords for “Black girls” as “Adult.” Our assessment suggests 80-88 percent of recommended keywords for Black-, Asian-, Latinx- boys and girls were adult or pornographic.
Read the full story here: https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/07/23/google-advertising-keywords-black-girls
Look at Google’s recommended keywords and our methodology on GitHub: https://github.com/the-markup/investigation-google-keyword-planner
Here’s a YouTube playlist of related and cited works:
