Julia Angwin

Facebook’s Secret Censorship Rules Protect White Men From Hate Speech But Not Black Children

A trove of internal documents sheds light on the algorithms that Facebook’s censors use to differentiate between hate speech and legitimate political expression.

Julia Angwin
Hannes Grassegger
By Julia Angwin
And Hannes Grassegger
Facebook's Secret Censorship Rules Protect White Men From Hate Speech But Not Black Children

In the wake of a terrorist attack in London earlier this month, a U.S. congressman wrote a Facebook post in which he called for the slaughter of "radicalized" Muslims. "Hunt them, identify them, and kill them," declared U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican. "Kill them all. For the sake of all that is good and righteous. Kill them

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Bias In Criminal Risk Scores Is Mathematically Inevitable, Researchers Say

An analysis of bias against black defendants in criminal risk scores has prompted research showing that the disparity can be addressed — if the algorithms focus on the fairness of outcomes.

Jeff Larson
Julia Angwin
By Jeff Larson
And Julia Angwin
An inmate stands at his cell door at the maximum security facility at the Arizona

The racial bias that ProPublica found in a formula used by courts and parole boards to forecast future criminal behavior arises inevitably from the test’s design, according to new research. The findings were described in scholarly papers published or circulated over the past several months. Taken together, they represent the most far-reaching

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Facebook Doesn’t Tell You What It Really Knows About You

The site shows users how Facebook categorizes them. It doesn’t reveal the data it is buying about their offline lives.

Julia Angwin
Terry Parris Jr
Surya Mattu
By Julia Angwin
And Terry Parris Jr
And Surya Mattu
Facebook

(ANALYSIS) --- Facebook has long let users see all sorts of things the site knows about them, like whether they enjoy soccer, have recently moved, or like Melania Trump. But the tech giant gives users little indication that it buys far more sensitive data about them, including their income, the types of restaurants they frequent and even how

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Facebook Says It Will Stop Allowing Some Advertisers To Exclude Users By Race

Facebook says it will build a system to prevent advertisers from buying credit, housing or employment ads that exclude viewers by race.

Julia Angwin
By Julia Angwin
Image credit: David Sleight/Pro Publica/CC

Facing a wave of criticism for allowing advertisers to exclude anyone with an "affinity" for African-American, Asian-American or Hispanic people from seeing ads, Facebook said it would build an automated system that would let it better spot ads that discriminate illegally. Federal law prohibits ads for housing, employment and credit that exclude

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Facebook Lets Advertisers Exclude Users By Race

Facebook’s system allows advertisers to exclude black, Hispanic, and other “ethnic affinities” from seeing ads.

Julia Angwin
Terry Parris Jr
By Julia Angwin
And Terry Parris Jr
Image credit: David Sleight/Pro Publica/CC

Imagine if, during the Jim Crow era, a newspaper offered advertisers the option of placing ads only in copies that went to white readers. That’s basically what Facebook is doing nowadays. The ubiquitous social network not only allows advertisers to target users by their interests or background, it also gives advertisers the ability to exclude

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Google Quietly Drops Ban On Personally Identifiable Web Tracking

Google is the latest tech company to drop the longstanding wall between anonymous online ad tracking and user’s names.

Julia Angwin
By Julia Angwin
GoogleWeb

When Google bought the advertising network DoubleClick in 2007, Google founder Sergey Brin said that privacy would be the company’s “number one priority when we contemplate new kinds of advertising products.” And, for nearly a decade, Google did in fact keep DoubleClick’s massive database of web-browsing records separate by default from the

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FAQ About NSA’s Interest In Angry Birds And Other ‘Leaky Apps’

U.S. and British spy agencies have sought to intercept the information transmitted by the games and other apps that users download onto their smartphones.

Julia Angwin
Jeff Larson
By Julia Angwin
And Jeff Larson
In this photo released by Lucasfilm, a developer demonstrates the Angry Birds Star Wars game. (AP Photo/Lucasfilm, Gary He)

What's new here? This article reveals how U.S. and British spy agencies have sought to intercept the information transmitted by the games and other apps that users download onto their smartphones. Previous stories have detailed how U.S. and British spies have been intercepting massive quantities of cellphone text messages and gathering the

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