In settling five different lawsuits at once, Facebook earlier this year promised to change the way it manages the advertisements for housing, employment, and credit that run on its platform. Advertisers would no longer be able to target an audience by gender, race, or age, in order to prevent against discrimination of legally protected groups.
But, new research by a team of computer scientists, including Northeastern professor Alan Mislove, shows that the algorithm Facebook uses to deliver advertisements can still skew toward specific demographic groups—despite the changes the company made.
