Are your keyword blocklists accidentally damaging society? [Video]

Would your business consciously block an online video of former US President Barack Obama in conversation about race and how to cure racism with a prominent athlete and youth icon?

Probably not.

And yet if you were to pull a list of brands which do advertise around this particular video, you’d probably find there aren’t many prominent ones. Why? Because there’s a massive problem at the heart of our systems at the moment, and no-one is really talking about it.

The problem is quite simple – we’ve baked a whole lot of biases into our advertising industrial complex which are now unconsciously discriminating against a large swathe of content creators across societal issues ranging from inclusion and sustainability to mental health.

And it is all happening unconsciously.

You see, the same systems which stop many brands from advertising around that Obama video because it has ‘racism’ in the title are blocking a lot of content which is not …