Advertisers use the data to direct their efforts toward the members of the public who are most interested in their products. Like senior products being targeted to older people. Certain hair products being targeted to ethnic hair. Things like that. If I'm going to be forced to look at ads, they should at least have some relevance to me.

I've taken some surveys where, if they use you for surveys, you'll get paid a bit. I quit doing those after a few times, since after I answer the race question, the survey says thanks but based on your answers, we don't need you for surveys at this time. I'm white. I forget now, but based on some of the questions, I thought they were trying to reach Hispanic people.

But online data doesn't necessarily have your race, religion, gender, age and such. Whenever I input info like that, like in FB, I lie. So although people can find my age on the internet, they would also find different ages and addresses.

But maybe the data is used for something else that I'm unaware of.

One of the biggest issues over the past century dealt with "redlining" and this helped to create defacto segregated housing. When the Fair Housing Act became law, communities could no longer exclude people by race. However what they then did was if they knew an interested party was a minority, they would boldly lie and tell them - "Oh that house is no longer available, someone has bought it" or some other nonsense. The same happened with rentals of apartments and/or houses.

Fast-forward to the internet and now minorities could have the same access to what was available on the market as the majority population. So what some have started doing now is getting around the law by "data collection" (in the form of a buyer "profile" ) with the purported "innocent" reason being to "determine the type of dwelling a person might be interested in" and then attempt to "match" that person with their "dream dwelling" (or provide a list that might be suitable).... Which means it might again introduce race right back into the equation (if that is a required field) in order to do the same damn thing of redlining. And if a "race" option is not there, they can simply use the data from the zipcode of your current address (as part of how they might need to "correspond" with you in the future), and since most zipcodes around the country are still segregated, right away, they can guess what race you are. And this is not just for race but also an issue in rural areas for getting services like banks, cable television and internet, supermarkets, medical facilities, etc. - https://www.bandwidthplace.com/digital-redlining-and-its-impact-on-internet-access-in-rural-america/

You also have the issue of how certain products are aimed at certain communities in a nefarious way - in the past some products that were often highlighted included malt liquor (which has a higher alcohol content than regular beer) and companies selling menthol cigarettes - both being almost exclusively targeted towards the black community. So with that in mind, the online version of the same practice would be to get data and then store "cookies" on your computer so that as you visit various sites, you get targeted only by advertisers with specific racially-profiled products, where you may not have any interest in those products at all and might prefer other products from that company.

I.e., there is a difference between racially-appropriate and racially-profiled.

I live in an integrated neighborhood that is adjacent to majority-minority neighborhoods and grew up watching the "white flight" over the past almost 50 years... And until recently, the shopping complexes eventually dwindled down to nothing but sports attire and sneaker shops, as if the only thing that black people wore were hoodies and sneakers.

Fortunately a revamp is underway in my area and stores like "Old Navy" are either supplementing or replacing nonsense like "City Blue".

But the flip side of targeting minorities for booze, is that they are targeting an audience that buys their products more often (assuming that is the basis for their targeting). Otherwise, they wouldn't do it. Your implication is that they are targeting a group that does not use their products, but advertisers usually target groups that do tend to be in the market for their types of products. So their ad dollars aren't wasted so much.

This makes sense to me.

I see your point on the real estate, though. But people don't normally shop for real estate through ads. There are online real estate listing sites, like Zillow and realtor.com, that are used heavily. I just bought a house not long ago. I didn't look at ads for houses and don't recall seeing any.

I don't see the sense in restricting advertisers to advertising to everyone in lieu of targeting their ads to their most likely users. That's just advertising and not discrimination, in my view. Advertising is just about sales and profits. They don't care who buys, as long as they buy.

As for cookies, people need to clear their cookies periodically. I get the same ads over and over, based on sites I visited. Don't link your FB account with anything else. Things like that.

That's just what I think. Seems to me there are real egregious racial discrimination policies that need to be addressed, rather than this one. But in the end, I don't care that much. It's just ads on the internet.