Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Lets Advertisers Exclude Users By Race (propublica.org)
schwit1 quotes a report from ProPublica: Imagine if, during the Jim Crow era, a newspaper offered advertisers the option of placing ads only in copies that went to white readers. That's basically what Facebook is doing nowadays. The ubiquitous social network not only allows advertisers to target users by their interests or background, it also gives advertisers the ability to exclude specific groups it calls "Ethnic Affinities." Ads that exclude people based on race, gender and other sensitive factors are prohibited by federal law in housing and employment. You can view a screenshot of a housing advertisement that ProPublica's Julia Angwin and Terry Parris Jr. purchased from Facebook's self-service advertising portal here. The report adds: "The ad we purchased was targeted to Facebook members who were house hunting and excluded anyone with an "affinity" for African-American, Asian-American or Hispanic people. (Here's the ad itself.) The Fair Housing Act of 1968 makes it illegal "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." Violators can face tens of thousands of dollars in fines. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 also prohibits the "printing or publication of notices or advertisements indicating prohibited preference, limitation, specification or discrimination" in employment recruitment. Facebook's business model is based on allowing advertisers to target specific groups -- or, apparently to exclude specific groups -- using huge reams of personal data the company has collected about its users. Facebook's micro-targeting is particularly helpful for advertisers looking to reach niche audiences, such as swing-state voters concerned about climate change. Facebook says its policies prohibit advertisers from using the targeting options for discrimination, harassment, disparagement or predatory advertising practices.
Soul Glow
You got the touch!
There is a big difference between having an ad that states there is a racial preference and targeting readers by race.
love is just extroverted narcissism
"I defy you to tell me how the Facebook Kwik-N-Easy Discrimination Toolkit can be used to discriminate!"
So what? How is this any different than advertising at hockey games, or on Univision? Advertisers have always targeted different ethnic groups differently.
Facebook promotes censorship, it does not protect speech. In fact they have been reported by former employees of censorship. Just like Twitter and Google, they are in the bag as propagandists, not outlets for free speech.
If you censor political opinions, why would you not allow other forms of censorship? It should be obvious that free speech is not a concern in one case, so would not be a concern in others. Oh, they may make phony claims that they care but that is simply to prevent people from abandoning the platform and finding/inventing other mediums.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
There is no violation of the law.
227-3517
Uh, they aren't in violation of the law. If you actually read the law it doesn't prevent you from selective marketing. You just can't express preference in the advertisement itself. What a bunch of fucking morons.
Do you have a constitutional right to be advertised to?
And if so, is it a right that I can renounce?
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
If targeting ads by race is suddenly racist then we should ban BET and Univision and any other media company that offers programming and advertising targeted for a racial group.
People with shit credit are not a protected class. Neither are heavy drinkers. You can perfectly legally not rent to any of the groups you mentioned.
Where you'll have a problem, though, is if you use race as a proxy for some of these groups, and discriminate based on that, in housing at least.
For sale: Pylons! construct them all day long!!
[EXCLUDE: ZERG]
Good people go to bed earlier.
If you don't understand how two similar immoral acts relate to character you have no right to call other people names.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Do you have a constitutional right to be advertised to?
And if so, is it a right that I can renounce?
Exactly what I was thinking. They can exclude me from any advertising they choose to, in fact they could exclude me from all advertising. Would I be outside their office protesting? I don't think so.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.
Exclusion on national origin can definitely be included in labor ads.
No, not really. The only purpose and intended effect of this construct is to achieve racial discrimination in who sees these properties for rent. What you're doing is trying to construct an excuse based on an extremely narrow and literal interpretation of the law cited in the article.
I am not a lawyer, but I really doubt whether a court would let either the advertiser or Facebook get away with such an obvious ploy.
However if you insist on arguing you can wiggle out of it by splitting semantic hairs, you might want to take a look at this site, which explains a little about anti-discrimination laws: http://civilrights.findlaw.com...
Check out the third item from the top in the list of banned actions: "Making housing unavailable". I'd say that deliberately flagging advertisements to exclude blacks, asians, and hispanics (as Facebook is offering as a service here) can be construed as "making housing unavailable" to those groups.
It's interesting to see Facebook doing this because it provides an extremely clear example of just how pervasive racial discrimination still is in the US.
Such laws are bogus, in violation of the First Amendment
Keep reading. Let us know when you get to 14. Pay particular attention to Section 5, which states "Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article".
The thing about the U.S. Constitution, is that you can't just pick and choose the parts you like.
The fact is there is a law on the books about this topic and through the self service portal you can violate it.
I'm not sure that's FB's fault. The advertiser is the one selecting the exclusions.
There are other ad campaigns where this targeting is perfectly valid and legal. I think the expectation from FBs devs is that you are responsible for not doing something illegal with their service.
Same issue:
If I post hate content on FB and cause someone to kill themselves is FB blamed for it? no. I am. (rightly so).
This advertising issue should be no different.
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
The Fourteenth applies to discrimination by governments, which I already said should remain illegal (sadly, it currently is not). I'm talking about that by private entities.
If you insist on the 14th being applicable to corporations, then it must apply to individuals too. A girl rejecting four Black suitors, but then going out with an Asian one would have to explain the statistics and prove herself not racist. Will you accept such laws too, or do you think, that would be a ridiculous overreach?
But, of course, the 14th Amendment is not applicable to corporations, otherwise there would've been no need for the laws cited in the write-up...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
There are business's that are intentionally divided by ethnic lines that aren't inherently racist. For instance, there are black barber shops that sell products specifically black people. Why? Because their hair is entirely different from most other ethnicity's. Most white barbers are not that familiar with black hair. So if I had a black barber shop, I'd only want to advertise to the black population.
I can see how this can be abused, but I understand why it exists.
You have poor reading comprehension. Does not targeting group X with advertising:
* abridge any citizen's privileges or immunities? NO.
* deprive any citizen of life, liberty, or property? NO.
* deny any person equal protection of the law? NO.
Does it have anything whatever to do with proportional apportionment of representation? NO.
Does it have anything whatever to do with eligibility of candidates for President, Vice President, Senator, Representative, or holding civil or military office? NO.
In case you're talking about "civil rights" rather than the subject of this article, the Fourteeth Amendment has absolutely squat to say about personal or business discrimination. All laws based on that absurd premise are VOID on their face.
In case there is any confusion the whole point of advertising companies building profiles of people is so they can JUDGE them based on statistical datasets and use the resulting judgment to maximize their own profits. Their activities are inherently prejudicial.
Inventing what amounts to public signage which can only be read by certain people isn't illegal. You after all are not expressing a preference within content of the sign.
The same way stealing your shit (civil forfeiture) doesn't violate the 14th amendment.
Or stalking cell phone users, reading emails and collecting everyone's phone records without warrant does not violate the fourth amendment. Neither is the 7th amendment violated by undecipherable nonnegotiable omnipresent EULAs requiring submission to arbitration.
Up is down, left is right there is no spoon.
Fact of the matter is, different ethnicities have different needs. Black people need different hair products, prefer to buy different clothing and shoes, listen to different music, eat different foods. Men don't buy high heels or cosmetics. Women aren't very interested in power tools or car related trinkets. And so on and so forth. There's this notion that differentiating by need is sexism/racism/etc-ism somehow, but it really isn't. Stereotypes are rooted in reality. All those advertisers are trying to do is sell as much stuff as possible while paying as little for advertising as possible. They couldn't care less about which exact demographics buy stuff. They only care that those demographics are more or less likely to make a purchase decision as a result of seeing an ad. So yes, chicken and watermelons will get shown to black folks, and coffee, by and large, won't be. The way to "fight" this (if you feel passionate enough about the issue) is not by getting your panties in a bunch, but by eliminating the incentive: that is, by getting the particular demographic to _not_ make a particular purchase decision. Do that, and the "problem" will go away on its own.
The advertiser couldn't select that exclusion if Facebook did not allow them to select it. Simply put, the race of the person being advertised to should not be a criteria that is even available for selection by the advertiser.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I thought it was impossible for me to hate Facebook any more than I already did, but whaddya know......
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
You have a constitutional right to not be not advertised to because of your race/religion/gender/other protected status. It's strange, but readily obvious. Imagine a smart billboard that advertised available CEO jobs only to men, and only advertised maid/schoolteacher/cook positions to women. Can you not see how fundamentally messed up that is?
Basically, you have a right, as always, not to look at advertising.
Frankly, I hate targeted ads, and would be quite happy with a law against targeted advertising. If for no other reason than it eliminates like 95% of the well-funded efforts to violate my privacy.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Uh, I'm pretty sure that means that your ad can't say you're looking for someone except for the nasty race(s), not that you can't target your ad towards one or another race. Eg if your ad says, "looking for white male programmer, age 20-30", you had better have a good lawyer.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
no unless you had a policy of removing all postings by and or supporting %race% or removing all postings not by or supporting %race%
so NO "Orange postings only" or "Only Orange postings"
you can remove postings that are off topic and or offensive or course (and outdated postings canceled postings)
BTW The First Ammendment only covers Government or Government Enforced entities btw the full text is of course
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances"
Democrats have always been the real racists, from the Civil War through the Civil Rights era all the way until today. Oh, they accuse the other side of it, but if you watch closely, they always accuse others of what they're really guilty of doing.
That the same advertisers and services that want to browbeat everyone for ever minor misstep are the absolute worst about "discriminating" when it comes to their targeting and demographic marketing. It's not outrageous, so what if I'm selling a product and think a certain market is going to buy more of them so that's who I target? Is this news to anyone?
The thing is, it's the hypocrisy of it all that bothers me. Well, that and the erasing of personal preference. I prefer not to date women with red hair, I don't find it attractive. Should I be called a hair-ist? She had no control over being born with red hair, should I be forced by law to date a redhead even if I don't find her attractive because "discrimination"? Where does it end?
Dat's Rayciss!
You have a constitutional right to not be not advertised to because of your race/religion/gender/other protected status.
You definitely don't, because the constitution is a set of restrictions on what the government is allowed to do to its citizens.
Also, even if it were, then Hollywood would be constantly violating the constitution by only offering roles to actors that matched the race/sex of that role. Is it messed up that the role of Martin Luther King Jr. was offered to David Oyelowo as opposed to Angelina Jolie, because of Mr. Oyelowo's race and gender?
Frankly, I hate targeted ads, and would be quite happy with a law against targeted advertising. If for no other reason than it eliminates like 95% of the well-funded efforts to violate my privacy.
Why not just make a law against advertising in general?
So, it appears ProPublica may have violated the Fair Housing Act by placing this ad. HUD should investigate and fine them as appropriate. I suggest that everyone here file a complaint with HUD about ProPublica's behavior.
The publisher (Facebook) didn't place the ad, the advertiser did.
I'd bet that Facebook has adequate disclosure on its site and in its terms of service for advertisers (although, I've not confirmed this) about the Fair Housing Act's requirements.
The fact that an individual ad is, for example, targeting non-Hispanics in ads they place on Facebook does not mean they are discriminating against Hispanics in violation of the Fair Housing Act. The advertiser may be spending 95% of their overall advertising budget specifically targeting Hispanics in forums (such as Telemundo) other than Facebook and be trying to reach non-Hispanics as well as part of an overall balanced advertising strategy. Facebook can't possibly be expected to know this as Facebook has no idea what the advertiser is doing in other media.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Sure, hence the government cannot discriminately advertise. In a related story, the government extended legal protection over advertisements with regards to jobs and housing.
But, yeah, I probably should have made that clearer in the response to the original poster who mentioned constitutional rights. Kinda wasn't thinking about the stupid semanticpart when I could address the meat of the moral issue .
Well, you are allowed to discriminate if its relevant to your ability to perform the job. For instance, a handicapped person could not sue under the ADA for a construction job (assuming they were incapable of doing it.)
Because that would be an unconstitutional abridgment of your right to free speech. Targeted advertising, by definition, involves my right to privacy.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
Yep, that's what they're going to be left with; they're allowed to discriminate against Luddites in app provision, but not many others.
Uhm... it says right in the part you quoted which part of the law it violates.
They have these other things, called statutes or "laws," that are in addition to the Constitution. The summary mentions 2 that are relevant here.
Wow, I know not to read the article or click any links, but you're taking alliteracy to a new level.
If I put up a community message board, and someone posts a discriminatory ad on it, have I "caused to be made" that ad
No, because you didn't induce anyone to put something illegal up there.
The "cause to be" clause is there to prevent someone from escaping culpability on a technicality because they personally didn't make, print, or publish the ad. A scumbag landlord can't use the defense of "Your Honor, I hired a designer to make that ad, and the newspaper is the one who printed and published it, therefore I'm not guilty." That isn't going to fly, because the scumbag landlord hired the designer (caused the ad to be made) and paid to run it in the paper (caused it to be printed and published).
"If there was a gay Afro-Puertorican Linux distribution, I'd give it a try" ~lucm
"Disparate impact" jurisprudence would disagree with that.
Is that put in the US constitution? Where? How did that work until the 1960's when blacks had less formal rights than humans? Or is this regulated just in "normal" laws?
Were the magnets just letters, or did they include a pre-made fully-formed n-word?
Is the complaint that facebook fails to detect all forms of racism in the ads submitted? Or is the claim actually that they allow a user to select race specifically, to actually indicate their preference to the facebook algorithm which then carries out a race-based selection process?
The answer is right in the summary; yes, facebook is accused of explicitly identifying people's race and offering the service of race-based ad selection.
Asians? Really? Is this a china thing?
Uh, yeah.
The First and Fourteenth Amendments, just like I said.
It didn't, because it wasn't sufficiently clear, because there was no Equal Protections clause.
No, it's a limitation on government power found in the Constitution.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Indeed such stuff looks shocking to me, but on the other hand it has some advantage: it could free us of some mistargetted ads, such as hair care for black women served to bald white men.
Is that put in the US constitution? Where? How did that work until the 1960's when blacks had less formal rights than humans? Or is this regulated just in "normal" laws?
There were some seriously fucked up interpretations. At one time Citizens of African descent were considered 3/5ths of a human.
There has been conjecture and educated guesses that America's racial past will take around 200 years to recover from. We still have people pissed off about the Civil war.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Companies can buy aggregated credit scores that is aggregated basically really only at the street level between two intersections. These companies then mail out coupons or special offers to only the streets they care about. So they don't discriminate against who takes them up on the coupon, special credit card, mortgage rate or what ever else because they don't have to. The people they want to discriminate against never knew about the offer in the first place.
I'm not so sure there is a law on the books about this. The ads themselves (presumably) do not specify a preference, the law cited doesn't say anything about the distribution of ads being racially biased.
If there were such a law, it would likely be illegal to do a wide variety of targeted advertising that doesn't directly reference race.
To extend your example, this is more like going to a predominantly white male university CS department and posting that you're looking for a programmer.
Great, so they have a secondary function besides making me laugh.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... the race of the person being advertised to should not be a criteria that is even available for selection by the advertiser.
Okay. I'll bite.
If I am selling tickets to the BET Awards, I could save considerable money by excluding Caucasians in the marketing campaign.
If I am selling holiday packages to Vietnam, I would want to not advertise to the Vietnamese.
If I am selling flights to Thailand, I know the main markets are White-Americans, White-Australians and Asian-Australians, and Russians
And in this case, if I was advertising a property in a neighbourhood that is not popular with Hispanic people according to the demographic study conducted, why would I spend hundreds or thousands of dollars advertising to them?
Marketing 101: Identify your target market
[Rent This Space]
Sorry, Facebook lets advertisers exclude any race but white people.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Uhm... it says right in the part you quoted which part of the law it violates.
Just because the article says it violates the law doesn't make it so.
They have these other things, called statutes or "laws," that are in addition to the Constitution.
And they have still other things called courts who get to interpret both the laws and the constitution. There's no mention that courts have ruled on this situation yet.
The key thing I note is that both laws require the ad to indicate a preference. When you place the ad with Facebook you can indicate a preference for who the ad is targeted towards but that's not the same as the ad itself indicating a preference. Could be an interesting case though IANAL.
you're taking alliteracy to a new level
When accusing someone of being illiterate it's always good to know how to spell the word. No, it wasn't a typo on your part: the "a" is about as far as you can get from the "i" on the keyboard.
Ad targetting means trying to get the ads to certain groups of people, to get it to the people interested in the product (or falling for your scam).
If you target on the finanicial income, gender, the color of my car or the color of my skin doesn't matter.
People may target their ads based on stereotypes, but they probably won't. They will target them in a way, which maximizes their profit. The evolved way (think of a-b-tests) will possibly show, that some stereotypes emerge, because they are true (in the sense of the law of big numbers, not in the sense of every individual), others will just be equal as the stereotype isn't verified by the data.
You may argue, that targetting is bad for several reasons (i.e. that this is the reason why companies think they need to spy on you), but if you accept targeting, you should not make any difference in the criteria.
I can see why you wouldn't want to advertise to people in Vietnam, but why wouldn't you want to advertise to Vietnamese people? There'd be a disproportionately high number who'd want to visit their birthplace or the birthplace of their parents, surely?
Perhaps because it's unlikely that situation would ever occur, or rather, it would only occur because of reasons that have nothing to do with them being hispanic. The only thing I can think of would be income, given hispanics have an average lower income than whites, in which case, why not target income instead of "race"?
Ultimately though targeting race in adverts is, except in very rare cases, going to make existing racial problems worse.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I only want to see ads targeted to retired Flemish-American engineers.
You don't even have to go that far. You might structure entire advertising campaigns, for the same product, for different communities and ethnicities.
Want to sell iPods to typical white folks? Maybe you aim Taylor Swift endorsements at them. Want to sell those same iPods to some other ethnicity? Maybe you pick a different celebrity endorsement. Maybe you pick different music to play in the ads. Maybe you hire an acclaimed black director to make a campaign aimed at blacks.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Actually, as far as I can tell the law says that the advertisement can't contain an exclusion (i.e. "blacks need not apply"). I think a court would have to decide whether you're required to push your advertisement to users without regard to race.
It's worth pointing out:
A) the feature isn't actually checking the race of the user, it's guessing.
B) there are other ways to limit based on race without using race. For instance, FB could easily provide an option to filter based on zip code. If an advertiser targets their ads at all zip codes within a city except those with large black populations, is that also against the law?
I wonder if this applies to other publications. If I only advertise my apartments in a Chinese-language newspaper in San Francisco, is that discriminatory?
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
If you don't know that one acceptable term for Black Americans, wherever they may have been born, is "African-American", then you must have been living under a rock for some time now, like for more than 50 years. Welcome to the above-rock world!
Prices slashed - no reasonable offer refused:
http://c1038.r38.cf3.rackcdn.com/group4/building34566/media/0426wth.jpg
Some are offended at being called African-American, since as far as they're concerned, they have no ties to Africa.
It has been years that I only got **Friends** among Indians and only Indians reply to my texts, like, etc.! It is not ridiculous, I do prefer blue eyed Europeans than Indians and want no Africans in there, they always find how to insult me. I would definitely appreciate control over what countries I can be seen in, I could not find again the option, I do not even remember if it was Facebook or youtube. Funny that this article mentions 1964 and 1968. Did they have computers? NOOOO!!!! Then what the hell did they know about the world when their Africans were but a bunch compared to the much increased population nowadays? Truly, law does not mean it can never be reviewed, but here is not a matter of housing but of being contacted by OUTSIDE a MARKET. Unless, of course, you do not mind having a mob of civil righters invading your place and disposing of your bodies to keep the place...
I can see why you wouldn't want to advertise to people in Vietnam, but why wouldn't you want to advertise to Vietnamese people? There'd be a disproportionately high number who'd want to visit their birthplace or the birthplace of their parents, surely?
They wouldn't be interested in complete holiday packages. No-frills-flights: yes. But they don't need the package with fancy hotels, guided tours and that whole tourist stuff. So while you would want to market flights to Vietnam to Vietnamese, that would be a different product.
bickerdyke
Simply put, the race of the person being advertised to should not be a criteria that is even available for selection by the advertiser.
Why should gender be allowed as a criteria then?
bickerdyke
I tend to lump them in the "some people will find a reason to be offended no matter what you do" bucket.
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
Not exactly correct. Slaves were counted as 3/5ths of a person for Congressional representation, instead of a full person, and that's a good thing because that reduced the representation of slave states in Congress.
That's literally the only reason that clause exists in the Constitution, and it says nothing about race, only slave status.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
This is not in violation of the law. The law is about the advertisement itself, not who it is shown to.
If it said on the advertisement "only whites can apply", or "female applicants only", then it would fall afoul of such a law. Selectively showing it to specific groups has nothing to do with laws like this one, otherwise you would have to make a braille version so you don't exclude the blind and other such nonsense.
Apparently you know absolutely nothing about the advertising industry. Such studies happen all the time. They just aren't published, because that would be giving Intel, which you paid a lot of money to get, to your competitors.
You don't want to associate with me, so I try to force you (via government)?
We don't accept that in dating and marriage, as it's called stalking and rape, yet somehow it is virtuous to force in the context of other human relationships?
The "cure" seems even less civilized than the problem. It is using aggressive force against people who act peaceful (although distastefully in some cases).
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
No, it doesn't show which laws it violates. Those laws specifically cover "any notice, statement, or advertisement" regarding the "sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination". Selecting who gets to see your ads doesn't mean your ads indicate any preference, limitation, or discrimination. The other referenced laws has "printing or publication of notices or advertisements indicating prohibited preference, limitation, specification or discrimination" as its conditions; again, as long as the ads themselves don't indicate any preference or limitation based on race/gender, you wouldn't be violating them. Furthermore, as long as the ads aren't about housing or job openings, neither of those laws would apply in the first place.
You could argue that excluding people from seeing your ads based on race or gender is discriminatory, but it wouldn't be covered by the laws in the summary.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
As a grand postal delusionist on all things unpopular practical hippicrisy i dare say old chap , or rather question ... from u pure business / analytic perspective ... why is it racism if it is a know fact that a LOT of people define themselves by their own skin colour ?
i think this is debatable and im sure thats the exact reason why its done. Not cos marky mark suddenly turned arian nation
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?