-display housing ads either only to men or women;
-not show ads to Facebook users interested in an "assistance dog," "mobility scooter," "accessibility" or "deaf culture";
-not show ads to users whom Facebook categorizes as interested in "child care" or "parenting," or show ads only to users with children above a specified age;
-to display/not display ads to users whom Facebook categorizes as interested in a particular place of worship, religion or tenet, such as the "Christian Church," "Sikhism," "Hinduism," or the "Bible."
-not show ads to users whom Facebook categorizes as interested in "Latin America," "Canada," "Southeast Asia," "China," "Honduras," or "Somalia."
-draw a red line around zip codes and then not display ads to Facebook users who live in specific zip codes.
It's not like the Facebook Ad Manager has a guided wizard for the real estate industry to target prospective tenants.
For example, if you own a newspaper that caters to people of a specific national origin, are you not allowed to accept any housing ads? By definition, any ad placement on that newspaper is discriminatory in terms of targeting - without knowing the full details of the campaign, they cannot verify that the overall targeting is not discriminatory. This means that any law that makes publishers liable must be restricted to the content of the ads and any law that goes after the demographic targeting likely limits liability to the entity - the advertiser or perhaps agencies - who have full control and knowledge of the targeting in question.
Does this make sense?
If you do something illegal because someone asked you to do it, it's still illegal.
I can believe that being an oversight, but holy Shit those optics... yikes
I guess it's a little more murky when it comes to housing, but how many people in downtown Watts are going to be legitimate potential leads to rent a house in Beverly Hills? I'm not sure that advertisers should be forced to pay for ads to be shown to people that cannot afford or would otherwise not be interested in what they are trying to sell.
It says "such as"; I'm interested if this list includes "synagogue" or "Torah". Is there any place the entire list is included?
"colanders", "pirates", "meatballs": the Pastafarians are just as much a protected class as Catholics, Jains and Druze.
As a gay person, I see this all over the web. Smiling happy gay people buying cars or real estate or whatever. I imagine that behind each of these ads straight people have been de-selected for seeing this ad. But that doesn't mean these advertisers hate straight people or would deny a straight customer. It just means that for that specific ad and creative they were targeting gay people.
1) Create an ad targeting straight couples, and hide it from gay couples. 2) Create an ad targeting gay couples, and hide it from straight couples.
If you query for "is anyone running an ad hidden from gay couples", this would return "yes".
However, my hunch (hope?) is that the prosecution was clever enough to account for this, and are specifically finding ad campaigns which are "unbalanced" (eg; there is no ad targeting group X).
> _not_ to show ads to "undesireable" people, like people with kids, or of a certain religion
What if I have a bar in Vegas almost exclusively frequented by young people in their twenties who go their to get drunk and meet singles. Why would I want to waste money showing an ad to people with kids who will not be interested and bring way less conversions than people with no kids in their twenties? What if I open a delicatessen shop that makes most of its business on porc meat and liquor, would I get a lot of conversions by paying to show such an ad to Muslims or would I be wasting money? What you want is advertisers to show their ads to people who are not interested and lose their money. That doesn't seem fair to me. People of different family situation (kids or no kids) or religions don't always share the same interests and that's ok.
If landlord does not want to rent out to people with kids - I (as a parent with kids) do NOT want to see that ad.
How forcing landlord to advertise to categories they do not want to serve -- would help to anybody?
https://www.thebalance.com/fair-housing-act-violation-179889...
You want to target only a specific group that, under the law, can't be targeted/avoided? Fine, but then you have to create at least 3 segments on this ad to target at least 3 different groups, to prove that you are not discriminating.
A segment would be a version of the ad (design, copy, etc) + targeted group.
edit: my point here is that it should be Facebook's responsibility to make it difficult for publisher to post illegal ads, not the other way around.
Good lord. Does that mean that so many advertisers track your activities so thoroughly that they figured out you're gay?
Not saying that it's not creepy, just that with the way we use the internet these days, it's not an epic feat for an advertiser to figure this out given the amount of data we put out there.
There was a thing a few years back where Target was able to determine if someone was pregnant based on their purchasing habits [0].
Facebook, Google and others gather and track orders of magnitude more information than Target could ever dream of can certainly figure out if you are gay, straight, and anything else.
0: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits....
https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-lets-advertisers...
https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-advertising-disc...
> draw a red line around zip codes and then not display ads to Facebook users who live in specific zip codes.
This alone is really damn damning. I'm going to go out on a limb and say their counsel is really young and didn't know this was a problem. There is a lot of history in that sentence alone.
And that’s not even necessarily a bad thing. People and cultures change and so should our regulation and laws.
...what? Are you suggesting it's a good thing that we bring back red lining and other discriminatory practices?
I guess "move fast and break things" applies both to code and the law.
This is actually somewhat odd in this context. Obviously if you're advertising housing in Boston you don't want to be advertising it to people in Washington or China, or probably even Springfield. So you need some way to specify a set of regions and zip code is the obvious way of doing that.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Housing_Act
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
By law you cannot discriminate by any designation of protected class, which includes not only parties to a business transaction but also messaging and opportunities there upon.
I do understand why Facebook would allow ad display filtering by race and other demographic categorizations since they are a media organization who sells advertising. Whether or not that practice is morally qualified or agreeable it makes sense from a business perspective (oh how I do detest advertising).
What I don't get is why Facebook would allow ad suppliers the option to set values to these filters. Facebook has the data to make optimal demographic determinations for a geographically centered business market. Perhaps this indicates that either Facebook isn't very good at that or that ad supplies prefer to perform their own independent research out of distrust or lack of availability from Facebook.
Anyway, this does look like a valid complaint. I wouldn't just sue Facebook though. I would also seek for discovery of the ad suppliers and sue them as well. Facebook is just the proxy here. Somebody is making a deliberate determination to racial profile in violation of the spirit of the law.
---
EDIT. See the third bullet point here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1968#Types...
This isn't about makeup, or placing ads in a targeted magazine like Ebony. It's about real estate and housing, and the laws governing that kind of advertising are well-established and very clear.
I worked briefly in large multi-unit housing, and got some of the training related to this sort of thing (though not specifically to advertising).
We were taught that if you're showing an apartment building to someone, you can't ask their age. You can't ask if they have children. You can't ask if they're pregnant.
You can't even do seemingly innocent things like ask a woman who is pregnant or visiting with children if she'd prefer a unit near the playground. Or suggest a ground-floor unit to a person in a wheelchair, even if the building doesn't have an elevator.
Maybe it was just this company's lawyer's overreactions to the law, or perhaps the company had previous bad experiences in this area. But we were given dozens of similar scenarios and those who answered even one incorrectly had to go through enhanced training.
Yes it makes sense in other contexts, but it should never have been allowed here.
I’m surprised it took this long for them to be sued. Just like job notices they’ve been allowing blatantly illegal ads for a LONG time.
In one example the discrimination is deliberately performed by an ad supplier. In the other example the discrimination is performed by the audience of the offline publication. I come to this conclusion because it is the audience that is choosing which demographically targeted publications to purchase or read. People cannot legally discriminate against themselves.
That distinction is also a paradox for Facebook. You cannot be a supplier to everybody and simultaneously to a targeted individual as chosen by individual's inputs. Facebook tries to have both sides of a coin by allowing users maximum flexibility in content preferences and also provide that power to ad suppliers to use for precision targeting.
That's not the issue. The issue is the application of demographics filters. While most publications have a self-selecting audience, the publications themselves do not apply those kind of filters, especially with regard to showing advertising content to a subset of readers.
According to Code of Federal Regulations 109, for example, your hypothetical would indeed be discriminatory (https://www.hud.gov/sites/documents/DOC_7781.PDF, search for "Selective use of advertising media or content")
Quoting the relevant section:
> The following are examples of the selective use of advertisements which may be discriminatory:
> (a) Selective geographic advertisements. Such selective use may involve the strategic placement of billboards; brochure advertisements distributed within a limited geographic area by hand or in the mail; advertising in particular geographic coverage editions of major metropolitan newspapers or in newspapers of limited circulation which are mainly advertising vehicles for reaching a particular segment of the community; or displays or announcements available only in selected sales offices.
(The rest refer to selective use of the "equal opportunity" slogan and logo, and to selective choice of human models to e.g. exclude children in housing ads.)
I would say, using targeted publications 'in addition' is not an issue, but using them as the 'main avenue' is an issue.
If Facebook, Google, et. al want to run advertising companies they have to properly conduct themselves in the current regulatory environment, if their competitive advantage really just boils down to the fact that they are ignoring the rules then there should be a market correction based on them being subject to actual enforcement.
(This is separate from how anyone feels about the actual rules, I think it is reasonable to say that everyone should agree that if there are rules they should be universally applied.)
If you do however put that onus on the platforms, then it's entirely predictable that platforms will cut ties with small businesses. This is more or less what happened with GDPR - lots of small ad-tech players became large liabilities for others in the value chain, leading to more consolidation in the industry. Outside of technology, it's common for certain types of services or tools not to be made aware to small-time customers. The technology industry at large and the large tech companies in particular have so far bucked this trend in a way that created a huge amount of value for the world at large, but this doesn't have to be this way.
I highly doubt that the majority of advertising business for Facebook and Google comes solely from discriminatory housing ads.
What happens if the rules are bad rules? E.g. if it's illegal for Facebook to allow advertisements for marijuana dispensaries on a federal level? Clearly that's not something we'd want to see universally applied.
you wouldn't believe how much time, effort, institutional knowledge, and expertise we applied to regulatory auditing, reporting requirements, and fraud detection per federal guidelines.
we were less than 80 employees total.
hardly a burden for the likes of google.
if (ad target == anything to do with housing) {disable options to exclude ethnic affinity [and a bunch of other things]}
There's two pieces to this a) Facebook makes this possible and b) Facebook damns themselves and promotes that they make this possible for housing. Part b is easy to fix: make it harder to do housing ads that are targeted. However, part a is much harder: what stops me from advertising my AirBnb listing as a URL on Facebook as a "generic ad"?
What this does is increasing the cost of serving small customers, while having negligible impact on the cost of serving large customers. This likely means companies like Google and Facebook will stop serving small businesses that cannot guarantee a certain budget. In a way, we live in a fairly rare time in that a small startup has access to AWS, Azure, GCP, FB ad manager and Google adwords, getting access to most of the same functionalities afforded to larger companies, while operating on tiny budgets without needing account management. This isn't true of many other industries or even services within the same industries. As is, I don't think small businesses are particularly profitable segments for these companies.
This is exactly what already happened with Youtube demonetization - the increased scrutiny on content safety and importance of having human content auditors made monetizing large groups of small-time publishers on Youtube entirely uneconomical for Google. So they got the boot. So in a sense, we should conclude the exact opposite here - automation is what allows a level-playing field for small players and if you take it away through putting a huge amount of pressure on platforms to police behavior of individual customers, it will accelerate consolidation in other industries.
Why is everyone trying so hard to turn facebook (and google, twitter, etc...) into a filter on everything we say?
When facebook gets held responsible for all content in all jurisdiction it will err on the side of proscription. It was only about 10 years ago that many now acceptable (mandatory even) progressive positions were not in favor.
It won't be another day or two before there is another article bemoaning google acquiescing to China. Pick one. I'll take the one that is open, the crazies broadcast their fake news and we have the occasional illegal ad.
By the way, if these ads are illegal and conducted through facebook, how easy is it for the FHA to look up who is responsible and go after them. Their whole job is done for them. Going after Facebook is sensational and feels good I guess.
In this case, just like Facebook.
Your responsibility, handed to you with the license, is to not do illegal things, even if people want to pay you money to do it. It's especially bad if you build an automated system that has options for people to do illegal things, since you are in charge of that. The FCC may or may not go after the people who bought the illegal-thing-service from you, but they will definitely go after you.
And the correct solution is to not have the options open in the first place. "Would you like to place an ad? Is it for real estate or housing in any way? OK, the following advertising options are open to you, but others have been turned off in order to comply with the law."
This extends to many areas. Gun manufacturers aren't liable when someone goes on a shooting spree with a gun, for example.
I feel like this is a slippery slope. Facebook lets anyone advertise anything, and gives everyone the same targeting tools. If you use them illegally, that should be on you, not on Facebook. Just like how you can use a screwdriver to screw in screws, or to go around stabbing people with it. The difference is that screwdrivers are a well-understood tool, whereas ad targeting tools are new and scary.
If you want to make advertising illegal, I'm fine with that, but good luck.
If someone asks Facebook to publish an illegal ad, Facebook should not do it.
This is not a free speech issue, or a political speech issue. Nobody is censoring progressive or conservative positions in this case. It's an issue of legality in real estate advertising under a framework of laws that were written decades ago.
Maybe we should acknowledge it is impossible to make a global, legal, Facebook-like website.
No. Going after Facebook is the only effective way to combat these kinds of illegal ads that occur on its platform. If you get it to comply, then the problem's solved at the source. If you follow your recommendation, HUD wastes its resources continually chasing after small fish, and the problem is never truly solved.
In Facebook’s case they not only did that but marketed their death threat service and touted it as highly effective.
That’s a much better metaphor.
Exactly. You are the control operator.
It's not a very good metaphor, because no radio station simply publishes user-contributed content.
There's no way they can be liable because they can't know if the ads are illegal or not. The legality of a given ad depends on many factors not always present in the ad itself -- such as whether the landlord lives in one of the units. All of the above selection criteria are perfectly OK to filter by if a landlord occupies a unit in a building with less than 4 units.
This is why it's legal to advertise for particular genders in a shared apartment scenario. It's also legal to advertise for other criteria like race in these cases -- though it's not socially acceptable.
It's impossible for Facebook to know whether a given ad is legal because of these hidden criteria.
That may be ethical and legal if it's a nightclub or a retail product, but it's not allowed for housing. At a certain scale like Facebook, it should be incumbent on them to disable those ad filters for the ad buyers.
Because they are not utility companies and have taken upon themselves to filter results so they gave up safe harbour.
>(c) To make, print, or publish, or cause to be made, printed, or published any notice, statement, or advertisement, with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.
How is Facebook the FCC and not the broadcaster in this metaphor?
You say that like there is a clear, deterministic way to audit how Facebook ads are being targeted? I do not think you understand how ad trafficking on Facebook works.
How would the FHA determine that an ad was only being served to white people? Say you see and ad being served and you want to check if it is also being served to a black facebook user. You create a burner account. But now your Facebook feed isn't showing that ad anymore. Is it because of targeting, or is it because Facebook has other ad inventory that they want to show you? What if the inventory of the ad has been exhausted? I could be wrong, but it seems literally impossible to audit Facebook ads without access to Facebook's internals.
This is a specific law targeting specific advertisements. For many other kinds of advertising, facebook is still free from liability. The reason housing advertisements get special treatment is that housing is both a neccesity, and housing trends have a very strong effect on society.
It looks like this is to ensure advertisement reaches all protected categories. Can this mean that one would be forced to advertise in magazines that cater to different audiences? To guarantee a certain subset of the population is covered?
Thinking of facebook like traditional media doesn't really work. If we allow people to choose where they're advertising, by definition they're targeting. It'd be like randomly buying ads in magazines and papers.
At the end of the day, it seems more like landlords intent for targeting is more important than anything and that is where the fault lies.
If you had a building in an area that catered to people speaking a minority language (5%) of the population; can you target speakers of that language or do you have to spend 20x?
Nothing is preventing an atheist from reading a Christian magazine, or some non-expected audience member from reading an ad targeted at a general audience. The problem is when you control the viewers on an individual level, as Facebook does.
Landlord ads are more or less like job ads, in that sense.
If I understand correctly, your argument is that optimizing cost goes against making fairness for all its citizens. So, it is a matter of priority. What is more important "fairness and justice" or "cost reduction"?
With FB, you could target an ad to people who go to that school who are of certain race. (https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/609543/faceboo...)
This is specifically not allowed by the Fair Housing Act.
Edit: grammatical mistakes
>(c) To make, print, or publish, or cause to be made, printed, or published any notice, statement, or advertisement, with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.
If people actually did place housing discrimination ads they'd also be in violation of the law.
(In general, laws are usually written in a way to prevent profiting off of illegal behavior)
The main reason why racial preferences are not allowed to get published -- is because it reinforces public bias toward specific race. But if ads are simply not shown to some group -- what is the problem with that?
I'd argue both are responsible - the platform hosting the ad and the people making the ad.
How is it different from hardware store that sell knives that can be used to cut vegetables or people, at the discretion of the buyer?
Maybe a better way to deal with that is a different regulation. Mandate the industry designation in the ad and if it is something protected by existing laws, like housing or job ads, remove filters that allow for adding or removing by protected category from the interface.
There is a law on the books prohibiting publishers from publishing descriminitory ads, even if they didn't write them.
That's the difference.
However, we do have laws about sales of guns, chemical weapons precursors, nuclear fuel, aircraft, etc.
Practically speaking, which one sounds better: "HUD files discrimination complaint against Facebook" or "HUD files discrimination complaint against Jimmy's Duplex-Mania in rural Alabama"?
Wait for it.
The idea that we should operate without discrimination is a toothless platitude with little bearing on reality. It is not Facebooks responsibility to change reality because they are able to accurately quantify and qualify it's existence, and sell ads based on their findings.
Facebook ad audience filtering -- is a very different tool.
This case isn’t “no one can discriminate with ads”. It’s “no one can discriminate ILLEGALY with THIS TYPE of ad”.
Yes, but not on race, gender, income, sexual orientation, etc.
Even residential real estate has to follow a bunch of codes though, like secure railings on all stairways for starters.
Emphasis mine.
If the FHA does indeed prohibit online advertisement discriminating on those criteria, this sounds pretty damning to Facebook. Those are some of the key features of Facebook ads.
> To make, print, or publish, or cause to be made, printed, or published any notice, statement, or advertisement, with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.
This clearly covers online or any other kind of ad.
> Sec. 804. [42 U.S.C. 3604] Discrimination in sale or rental of housing and other prohibited practices
If this applies even in who the ads is shown to, think about the implications. What if I run an ad in e.g. "Golf Digest Weekly"? Would that be unlawful for that publication to actually publish? What if I place a billboard in a high income area? Is the billboard renter liable? Is my ad unlawful? If I place a for-sale sign in the yard of a vacant house in a high-end neighborhood, is that unlawful as well?
I'd like to think the HUD has thought out their case and it's implications, but I don't see how you can take their interpretation of this law without practically destroying all housing ads - which is clearly not their intent. So I'm very anxious to see how this plays out in court!
A classic example was a case brought against the New York Times for discriminatory housing classified ads.
Now, what's interesting here is that Facebook is involved in the targeting. So, if you only place housing ads in the Chicago Defender, and don't place them in White newspapers, the Defender isn't involved in your discrimination; however, if you place ads in the Defender stating "Black Tenants Only" and the Defender published those, the Defender would probably be liable. And if you pay an advertising firm and tell them to only place your ad in "Black" newspapers then that firm that did the targeting would be liable.
(Although in terms of enforcement priorities, such discrimination is probably very small-scale and wouldn't be very high up on HUD's or DoJ's list.)
https://www.facebook.com/business/success/quadrant-homes
It basically is showing that Facebook knowingly implemented a system to discriminate against people. Even the stock photos are full of white people.
Here's hoping HUD makes a big example out of them and fines them to the fullest extent of the law.
I generally agree that FB should not be allowed to permit users to segment these types of advertisements by the dimensions claimed. However, what piques my curiosity here is whether “indirect” discrimination in choice of advertising medium constitutes discriminatory practice.
For instance, what if some of these advertisers, instead of segmenting directly by race to target whites only, targeted fans of pages that were obviously but not specifically comprised of whites (e.g., “Irish American Heritage” or “Blonde Hair Tips”). Would there be a case to be made for discrimination? And against whom?
>effectively limit housing options for these protected classes
I have head of zip code being protected or personally identifiable information but never a protected class
Also fun fact, "age" as a protected class in the US only refers to discrimination against people over the age of 40.
In employment law, not housing law.
"the systematic denial of various services to residents of specific, often racially associated, neighborhoods or communities"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Housing_Council_of_San_Fe...
Worth reading the case to understand what FB is up against here.
a) A token fine
b) A fine large enough that it sees investors taking action against the management
c) A fine that is an existential threat to Facebook
d) Jail time for executives
e) Forced closure
I just wonder if anyone can suggest how serious this could be if they are found to be I the wrong?
You can also conduct illegal activity via Facebook messenger of groups, does that make it Facebook's fault?
See e.g. a similar case brought against the New York Times in the 80s, and the resulting investment by the Times in a reviewing process where humans went through submitted ads looking for discrimination.
I guess what I'm thinking is, if Facebook had a feature (maybe it does, I'm not a user) allowing members to search housing classifieds, and if that feature allowed listing agents to discriminate against who saw their listings in results, that would be straight up bullshit. But, AFAIK, anyone can anonymously search different housing listing platforms for available housing wherever they want to live, so I guess I'm just struggling to see how housing advertising is worth this sort of scrutiny at all.
Again, I stress that discrimination is fucked and I'm happy to see something being done about it on any level, at all. I just feel like there are surely bigger fish to fry and spending resources on pursuing to whom/how ads are delivered doesn't seem like the best investment.
In the end they're going to have to either stop allowing housing ads or remove any filtering for those ads that relate to a protected class (including any fine grained geographic filters too probably because those turn into a racial proxy pretty quickly) and anything that's a significant proxy for something like race.
It's as if they don't understand how widespread racism, discrimination and segregation was, how it was systematically enforced, how it occurred and continues to occur and why these measures remain important.
Given this affected parties must continue the fight because that's the only way to confront selective memories, denial and ignorance.
If the laws still do not deter then increase the penalty until they’re adhered to. Such that it will leave no such question as to whose responsibility it is.
If we do not want such laws then repeal them.
Only the rule of law will prevail here.
Simply know the rules, or pay the penalty.
Their business is "I know ABCDEF about people, who would you like me to distribute your content to?"
Distributing content to people along ABCDE and F demographics happens to be legal in almost every case. The exception is specific housing discrimination laws that prevent filtering on ABC, etc.
It is outrageously unreasonable to expect Facebook to be responsible for the specific laws surrounding advertising for their customers. They provide targeted advertising. If their client targets demographics using an advertising strategy that happens to be illegal within their own industry, the responsibility is on the client/landlord, not Facebook. This is very much akin to blaming Microsoft for someone hacking from a Windows PC, or blaming the phonebook for a Chinese person emphasizing cold calls to the "Lee" portion of the book. If their actions are illegal, so be it, but the automatic assumption that the platform is responsible for the content that their users produce is fundamentally flawed.
Traditionally platforms benefit from safe harbour by being neutral, but the whole point here is that the decision about who to show the ads to can only be made by Facebook.
https://fairhousing.com/legal-research/hud-resources/adverti...
Section 804(c) of the Act prohibits the making, printing and publishing of advertisements which state a preference, limitation or discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin. The prohibition applies to publishers, such as newspapers and directories, as well as to persons and entities who place real estate advertisements. It also applies to advertisements where the underlying property may be exempt from the provisions of the Act, but where the advertisement itself violates the Act. See 42 U.S.C. 3603 (b).
Publishers and advertisers are responsible under the Act for making, printing, or publishing an advertisement that violates the Act on its face. Thus, they should not publish or cause to be published an advertisement that on its face expresses a preference, limitation or discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin. To the extent that either the Advertising Guidelines or the case law do not state that particular terms or phrases (or closely comparable terms) may violate the Act, a publisher is not liable under the Act for advertisements which, in the context of the usage in a particular advertisement, might indicate a preference, limitation or discrimination, but where such a preference is not readily apparent to an ordinary reader. Therefore, complaints will not be accepted against publishers concerning advertisements where the language might or might not be viewed as being used in a discriminatory context.
As far as roommates....
For example, Intake staff should not accept a complaint against a newspaper for running an advertisement which includes the phrase female roommate wanted because the advertisement does not indicate whether the requirements for the shared living exception have been met. Publishers can rely on the representations of the individual placing the ad that shared living arrangements apply to the property in question. Persons placing such advertisements, however, are responsible for satisfying the conditions for the exemption. Thus, an ad for a female roommate could result in liability for the person placing the ad if the housing being advertised is actually a separate dwelling unit without shared living spaces. See 24 CFR 109.20.
See http://www.netopia.eu/weblining-why-eating-at-nandos-could-c...
(Also, as we're going through an $ideology-scare, a disclaimer: I'm not criticizing the ultimate goal of anti-discrimination housing laws, nor even HUD for going after Faceboot here - but really pointing out the utterly predictable no-win situation these centralizing companies have created for themselves)
Reminiscent of IBM's history.
Personally I think the law is bullshit: what is interesting, and what we want to prevent, isn't landlords who can target only some group, but landlords who _do_.
But I guess facebook makes for an interesting target.
> what we want to prevent, isn't landlords who can target only some group, but landlords who _do_.
Sort of. Landlords will always, intentionally or unintentionally, target one group or the other, simply because they can't advertise literally everywhere. The important things are that the contents of the ads aren't discriminatory against protected classes, and they can in theory be seen by anyone who buys the right paper or sees the handbill or billboard or TV ad. FB's targeting appears to remove the possibility of equality of opportunity to view the ads. There's never a reason to allow filtering by protected classes on housing ads, so FB shouldn't have ever provided it as a feature whether directly or indirectly.
Like hitman services?
Just because the advertiser can use these tools to discriminate doesn't mean they actually do or mean they aren't 100% personally responsible to comply with the law.
I was kind of under the impression there were checks and balances to prevent these sorts of governmental fishing expeditions...
This isn’t a question of an agency interpretating a law to mean X, it’s right there in the text.
It was written with newspaper classifieds in mind (and probably other things). But it clearly applies.
So, Facebook should be free to profit from taking and selling, displaying those ads, without restriction? After all, they're not the ones doing anything illegal, right?
1) People are going to discriminate, even if it’s illegal. Heck, I was at a restaurant and an Israeli couple were smugly grinning about how they were discriminating against a candidate whom was “male and too old” by wasting his time and not calling them back. It sucks, but you can’t legislate not being an asshat, even with ostensibly anti-asshat laws.
https://www.craigslist.org/about/FHA
>Federal Fair Housing laws prohibit discriminatory advertising in all housing, regardless of how large or small the property. However, as discussed below, advertising which expresses a preference based upon sex is allowed in shared living situations where tenants will share a bathroom, kitchen, or other common area.
>Shared Housing Exemption -- If you are advertising a shared housing unit, in which tenants will be sharing a bathroom, kitchen, or other common area, you may express a preference based upon sex only.
I HAVE seen Craigslist take down apartment ads that list religious preferences.
Practically any criterion X you might use to restrict an ad's audience will have non-uniform correlations with group demographics. You can't wish away these correlations: they're true facts about the world. These non-uniform correlations allow activists to argue that allowing advertisers to target based on X is therefore prohibited discrimination. They can repeat this process for all X.
Now, you might argue that ad targeting is bad. That's a common position on HN. But it's not true: ad targeting is good for advertisers, since it enables more efficient advertising, and it's good for users, since it subjects them to less noise and exposes them to ads more likely to be relevant to them. Ad targeting also undergirds practically the entire tech economy. That probably means you, reader of this comment.
Where exactly should restrictions on ad targeting stop?
EDIT: For clarity:
Step 1: HUD files a complaint against Facebook for allowing ad targeting based on certain criteria.
Step 2: Facebook bans advertising targeting based on the criteria in the HUD complaint.
Step 3: Advertisers react by targeting based on demographic correlates of the categories from step #1.
Step 4: HUD notices that ads are still getting delivered more to one group than another.
GOTO STEP #1.
There's no clear point at which this process stops. Demographic correlates are numerous and strong. Are you going to ban all of them? That's tantamount to banning ad targeting generally!
> Where exactly does it stop?
It stops in cases when it's not protected and not breaking the law. Housing and job adverts cannot be explicitly descriminatory. It's a clear existing law. There is a clear line. You have to do your best and take precautions to avoid descrimination. When a platform doesn't do that then there's a problem.
User targeted ads do not produce better ads, despite everyone selling ads saying so.