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Comment by FlowNote | Hacker News Reader

If data collection can be sifted to discover behavior of groups...

And groups of people can have that behavior correlated to cultural and ethnic and racial factors...

Then, technically, isn't all of Silicon Valley violating the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s? For example, let's say black males statistically swipe phones a certain length and certain time... doesn't this mean ads targeting them can be engaging in disparate impact?

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Maybe. If such a swipe gesture discrepancy existed, ML could pick up on it as a proxy for race, despite having no concept of race and despite no human directing it to do so. One example I've heard of is lending software learning to use zip codes as a proxy for race, then systematically denying loans to minorities.

Much more egregious than this though is for years facebook was apparently allowing realtors to target only certain ethnicities. This was a case of deliberate human-driven discrimination, and as far as I know nobody has been held accountable for it. So far the tech industry has proven itself pretty good at getting around the law.

> Then, technically, isn't all of Silicon Valley violating the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s? For example, let's say black males statistically swipe phones a certain length and certain time... doesn't this mean ads targeting them can be engaging in disparate impact?

Yes, and lawyers have had, and will continue to have, a field day in every instance that they can prove this is true.

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