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8 Apr, 6 tweets, 4 min read
🧵: We found a secret blocklist on Google Ads that hides YouTube hate videos. But @leonyin and @asankin found it was full of holes.

Blocked: heil hitler
Not blocked: heilhitler

Blocked: white nationalist
Not blocked: white nationalists
themarkup.org/google-the-gia…
2/ Many hate terms weren’t blocked in YouTube’s ad buying portal at all. We tested 86 well-known hate terms and phrases, and only one-third were blocked. Unblocked terms included:

14 words
Blood and soil
Daily Stormer
Great replacement
Zionist occupation government
3/ Nearly every term blocked by YouTube’s list was easily evaded by removing spaces between words or pluralizing singular nouns. Experts such as @MeganSquire0 and @nandoodles told us that this wasn’t the best way to build a block list.
/4 After we contacted YouTube, it blocked many of the terms.

Google Ads also changed the code so that results for blocked terms are indistinguishable from results for searches where no related videos exist.

So future research using our technique is no longer possible. 😢
/5 YouTube spokesman @ChristophLawton – who I used to work with @WSJ – said “these terms are offensive and harmful and should not have been searchable.”

He added that YouTube has additional guardrails that prevent ads from running in videos containing hateful content.
/6 As always, we show all our work and provide the data we collected.

Warning: this methodology contains many offensive terms and expletives.

github.com/the-markup/inv…

themarkup.org/google-the-gia…

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More from @JuliaAngwin

Julia Angwin Profile picture
9 Apr
🧵: Yesterday we revealed how YouTube enabled advertisers to build ad campaigns around hate terms.

Today we reveal how YouTube blocked advertisers from building ad campaigns around social justice terms such as “Black Lives Matter.”

themarkup.org/google-the-gia… Image
2/ @LeonYin and @ASankin found that YouTube’s ad portal blocked search results for one-third of the 62 racial & social justice phrases tested.

For example: All the phrases we tested containing the word “Muslim” were blocked, even innocuous ones like Muslim fashion. Image
3/ Google would not comment on its blocked racial and social justice terms. But after we reached out, Google EXPANDED the block list to include ADDITIONAL terms including:

icantbreathe
black excellence
civil rights
racial justice
say her name Image
Read 5 tweets
Julia Angwin Profile picture
31 Jan
There’s been a lot of chatter on my feed about Facebook Oversight Board’s decision to release its ruling to some journalists and academics on embargo.

I thought it would be worth talking about how newsrooms can and should think about embargoes. /1
First, to address the obvious question: yes, embargoes are a PR manipulation tactic.

When you accept embargoed material, you usually cannot do what journalists normally do, which is consult experts about it. /2
Sometimes that trade-off makes sense – particularly if it is a story in which you have enough expertise to provide the proper context.

But often the trade-off means that you are missing outside voices that could have shaped the coverage. /3
Read 10 tweets
Julia Angwin Profile picture
5 Jan
Facebook is a newstand. But no one can see which news Facebook is pushing to the top.

So we built an app for that called #CitizenBrowser. Our first finding: the sharp impact of Facebook’s political ad ban reversal in the Georgia Senate elections.
themarkup.org/citizen-browse… /1
This is the first report from our #CitizenBrowser project. There will be many more to come. But first, I want to tell you a bit about how we did it because it’s the most ambitious thing we’ve ever done @themarkup – and we do a lot of ambitious projects. /2
#CitizenBrowser grew out of conversations @suryamattu and I had about how to audit Facebook. We had both worked on browser extensions to collect data from Facebook, but FB always threatened to shut those down, just like their recent threats against the NYU AdObservatory. /3
Read 13 tweets
Julia Angwin Profile picture
7 Dec 20
I’m excited to announce that we have assembled a fantastic team to help us get Citizen Browser launched! Citizen Browser is our ambitious effort to build a national panel to audit social media algorithms: themarkup.org/citizen-browser /1
@corintxt joins the team as Data Reporter - he will be digging through the data to help us find stories. Corin has long worked as a reporter covering technology news. I love this story outing pay-for-play crypto news outlets: breakermag.com/we-asked-crypt… /2
@angiewaller joins the team as Tech Coordinator - she is supporting our panelists & developers. Angie recently finished a masters in Computational Linguistics from @GC_CUNY. Her thesis analyzed objectifying comments in professor reviews: angiewaller.com/detecting-attr…. /3
Read 6 tweets
Julia Angwin Profile picture
29 Oct 20
Facebook’s black box algorithm charged the Biden campaign higher ad rates on average than it charged the Trump campaign.

A new investigation by @jeremybmerrill:

themarkup.org/election-2020/…
In swing states during July and August, Biden paid ad rates of about $34 compared with $17 paid by Trump’s campaign.

The gap narrowed in the fall - but overall Biden has paid 11% more than Trump.

As always, we show our work:
themarkup.org/election-2020/…
If Facebook were a TV station, it would be illegal for it to charge different ad prices to the candidates.But Facebook is not subject to the same rules.

Facebook’s response to us was that we don’t understand how ads work:
Read 4 tweets
Julia Angwin Profile picture
22 Sep 20
Journalism is supposed to afflict the comfortable.

So we built an app for that.

Introducing Blacklight – a privacy tool that lets you scan any website and see how you are being surveilled. Built by the incomparable @suryamattu.

themarkup.org/blacklight/
@suryamattu Blacklight was born from a conversation @suryamattu and I had updating the privacy series “What They Know” that I led ten years ago at @wsj.

What did we find? The Tl;DR: surveillance has become creepier and more difficult to stop.

themarkup.org/blacklight/202…
@suryamattu @WSJ Using Blacklight, @ASankin found that some of the most sensitive websites on the Internet - banks, medical clinics, child safety – were sharing their users personal data with third parties.

SunTrust Bank was sending user passwords to a 3rd party!

themarkup.org/blacklight/202…
Read 7 tweets

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