The Online Ad Industry Is Undergoing Self-Reflection. That’s Good News. - The New York Times

On a related note, see Google Training Ad Placement Computers to Be Offended (NYT)

"The best way to think of this is as a supply-chain problem. Big, complicated industries that sell commodity goods often get tripped up on sourcing: you don’t know who made your clothes, whether your diamonds are funding war or whether your shrimp may be complicit in slavery. The way to solve these externalities is through investigation and better documentation — to follow the money deep in the supply chain, to figure out who’s ultimately getting it.

Something like that is now happening in the programmatic ad industry. It’s rare to talk to someone in advertising who will tell you that things are working perfectly. They admit that there are holes in the system: Computers aren’t yet great at figuring out what’s racist and what’s not, or what’s fake news and what isn’t.

But they’re getting better, and the more activists push platforms like YouTube on this issue, the more incentive the platforms have to keep improving things."

The Online Ad Industry Is Undergoing Self-Reflection. That’s Good News. - The New York Times