Abusive Advertising: Scrutinizing socially relevant algorithms in a black box analysis to examine their impact on vulnerable patient groups in the health sector

TL;DR

This study investigates the persistence of unapproved stem cell treatment ads on Google after policy changes, using a crowdsourced black box analysis across multiple countries to reveal ongoing questionable advertising practices.

Contribution

It introduces a crowdsourced browser extension for black box analysis to detect unapproved medical ads, revealing their continued presence despite policy bans.

Findings

Questionable ads persisted post-policy change

Ads were detected across multiple countries

Crowdsourced analysis effectively identified ad presence

Abstract

The targeted direct-to-customer marketing of unapproved stem cell treatments by a questionable online industry is directed at vulnerable users who search the Internet in the hope of a cure. This behavior especially poses a threat to individuals who find themselves in hopeless and desperate phases in their lives. They might show low reluctance to try therapies that solely promise a cure but are not scientifically proven to do so. In the worst case, they suffer serious side-effects. Therefore, this thesis examines the display of advertisements of unapproved stem cell treatments for Parkinson's Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Diabetes on Google's results page. The company announced a policy change in September 2019 that was meant to prohibit and ban the practices in question. However, there was evidence that those ads were still being delivered. A browser extension for Firefox and Chrome was developed and distributed to conduct a crowdsourced Black Box analysis. It was delivered to volunteers and virtual machines in Australia, Canada, the USA and the UK. Data on search results, advertisements and top stories was collected and analyzed. The results showed that there still is questionable advertising even though Google announced to purge it from its platform.