The Harms of Targeted Weight Loss Ads

Liza Gak, a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, joins us to discuss her research on harmful weight loss advertising. She discussed how weight loss ads are not fact-checked, and how they typically target the most vulnerable. She extensively discussed her interview process, data analysis, and results. Listen for more!

Guest

Liza Gak: I am a third year PhD student at the School of Information at UC Berkeley, where I am advised by Dr. Niloufar Salehi. Most recently, I published The Distressing Ads That Persist: Uncovering The Harms of Targeted Weight-Loss Ads Among Users with Histories of Disordered Eating at CSCW 2022. I am interested broadly in human-computer interaction, social computing, online harms, and virtual communities. My research is generously funded by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the Center for Technology, Society, and Policy, and the Algorithmic Fairness and Opacity Group. In the past, I have worked at Meta, AT&T, and US Bank. I graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, studying Computer Science, Mathematics, and American Culture Studies.