Auditing the Compliance and Enforcement of Twitter's Advertising Policy

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Vekaria, Yash, Shafiq, Zubair, Zannettou, Savvas
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Vekaria, Yash
Shafiq, Zubair
Zannettou, Savvas
author_facet Vekaria, Yash
Shafiq, Zubair
Zannettou, Savvas
contents Online platforms have enacted various policies to maintain a safe and trustworthy advertising environment. However, the extent to which these policies are adhered to and enforced remains a subject of interest and concern. In this work, we present a large-scale audit of adult advertising on Twitter (now X), specifically focusing on compliance with its adult (sexual) content advertising policy. Twitter is an interesting case study in that it -- uniquely from other social media platforms -- allows posting of adult content but prohibits adult content in advertising. We analyze approximately 35 thousand ads on Twitter with respect to their compliance to the adult content ad policy through Perspective API and manual annotations. Among other things, we find that nearly 38% of ads violate Twitter's adult content advertising policy, although the platform eventually removed only about 63% of these non-compliant adult ads. We also find inconsistencies in the moderation of such ads across languages, highlighting the need for more reliable and consistent moderation practices across various languages. Overall, our findings highlight blind spots in Twitter's adult ad policy enforcement for certain languages and countries. Our work underscores the importance of external audits to monitor compliance and improve transparency in online advertising.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2309_12591
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Auditing the Compliance and Enforcement of Twitter's Advertising Policy
Vekaria, Yash
Shafiq, Zubair
Zannettou, Savvas
Computers and Society
Cryptography and Security
Human-Computer Interaction
Social and Information Networks
K.4.1; K.4.2; K.4.3
Online platforms have enacted various policies to maintain a safe and trustworthy advertising environment. However, the extent to which these policies are adhered to and enforced remains a subject of interest and concern. In this work, we present a large-scale audit of adult advertising on Twitter (now X), specifically focusing on compliance with its adult (sexual) content advertising policy. Twitter is an interesting case study in that it -- uniquely from other social media platforms -- allows posting of adult content but prohibits adult content in advertising. We analyze approximately 35 thousand ads on Twitter with respect to their compliance to the adult content ad policy through Perspective API and manual annotations. Among other things, we find that nearly 38% of ads violate Twitter's adult content advertising policy, although the platform eventually removed only about 63% of these non-compliant adult ads. We also find inconsistencies in the moderation of such ads across languages, highlighting the need for more reliable and consistent moderation practices across various languages. Overall, our findings highlight blind spots in Twitter's adult ad policy enforcement for certain languages and countries. Our work underscores the importance of external audits to monitor compliance and improve transparency in online advertising.
title Auditing the Compliance and Enforcement of Twitter's Advertising Policy
topic Computers and Society
Cryptography and Security
Human-Computer Interaction
Social and Information Networks
K.4.1; K.4.2; K.4.3
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.12591