Interview: Ranking Digital Rights explains new proposed indicators on targeted advertising & algorithmic decision-making
"Talking with Nathalie Maréchal of Ranking Digital Rights", December 2019
[W]e've [Ranking Digital Rights] been thinking about the new challenges for human rights online that are posed by companies' development and use of targeting advertising and of algorithmic decision-making systems... In October, we published a set of draft indicators that call on companies to... publish:
- An advertising content policy, outlining the company's rules about what ad content it allows...
- An advertising targeting policy, outlining the company's rules about how ads can be targeted...
- An algorithmic system development policy, outlining the company's policies and practices related to the development, training and testing of AI systems...
- An algorithmic system use policy, outlining how the company uses AI in its various products and services -- and just as importantly, how it *doesn't* use them because of privacy, expression, fairness or other concerns
... Until we know what companies actually do and how we do it, we can't have a meaningful conversation with them about the impact of their policies or what they should do differently. It's equally hard for governments to intervene in ways that are helpful and that support human rights without the kind of disclosures that the RDR Index calls for. [also refers to Facebook & Google]