Google targets low-income people with ads for "fake abortion clinics": Study

[ShazzieB]

https://www.salon.com/2023/02/08/google-targets-low-income-people-with-ads-for-fake-abortion-clinics-study_partner/

Research published Monday shows that Google is targeting lower-income users with advertisements for so-called crisis pregnancy centers, anti-choice organizations known to steer people away from accessing abortion care.

As the Tech Transparency Project (TTP), which conducted the analysis, explained: "Crisis pregnancy centers—which critics have dubbed 'fake abortion clinics'—appear to offer medical services but instead push an anti-abortion message, providing free ultrasounds and baby supplies with the aim of persuading women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Abortion rights advocates accuse them of using deceptive tactics to get women in the door—and targeting their advertising at low-income women and women of color in urban areas."

For its investigation, TTP established Google accounts for test users in Phoenix, Arizona; Atlanta, Georgia; and Miami, Florida. The users were characterized as 21-year-old women belonging to three different household income groups as defined by Google: average- or lower-income, moderately high-income, and high-income. While logged into each account, researchers entered 15 abortion-related search terms, including "Abortion clinic near me" and "I want an abortion," and then recorded ads that appeared on the first five pages of results. Researchers used a Google Chrome browser with no previous history, and they used virtual private networks to make it look like the users were conducting searches from their respective cities.

*snip*

"By pointing low-income women to [crisis pregnancy centers] more frequently than higher-income women in states with restrictive laws, Google may delay these women from finding an actual abortion clinic to get a legal and safe abortion," TTP director Katie Paul told The Guardian on Tuesday. "The time window is critical in some of these states," said Paul.

GRRRRR... What Google is doing makes me SO angry! It's bad enough that these bogus ass outfits are allowed to label and advertise themselves misleadingly. Google deliberately helping them target vulnerable groups is unconscionable!

[niyad]

1. and the WAR ON WOMEN continues apace.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

2. It's a mistake to presume that 'actual people' at Google are making these kinds of decisions

Advertisers say 'we want to target people that your demographics data say are low-income' and Google's algorithm sells them ads. There's 1000's of ad buys every day, and there's very few people in charge of monitoring the pseudo-political message of every single ad-buy like these.

You are basically anthropomorphizing ... a computer algorithm and its shopping cart.

Not saying they shouldn't employ 10's of thousands of people to micro-manage everything that happens with ads, but ... I'm not expecting it.

Nor would I expect they must judge every occasion the way I personally would

[ShazzieB]

3. That's a good point.

It still sucks imo, no matter how it's being done. If someone is searching for an abortion clinic, they shouldn't be getting hits for places that are the antithesis of that.

But what really sucks are those fake crisis pregnancy "clinics" and the way they're allowed to conceal their true nature. They are some of the biggest scams going.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

4. Yeah the existence of these places infuriates me ... f*** them

Couldn't agree more. Esp. the part where they get taxpayer dollars