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!
"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.
We'll let the courts decide. As someone with an "affinity" for hispanics (who is shockingly also hispanic), I have definitely experienced discrimination in the rentals market. The fact that facebook and partners would be so bold as to not realize this is illegal and unethical is evidence they are practically begging to get sued.
Really, is everyone here nuts? This is common behavior in advertising. It isn't illegal. There is no law saying you have to market housing equally to all races. You just CAN'T SPECIFY PREFERENCE IN THE MARKETING ITSELF.
There is no law saying you have to market housing equally to all races.
Careful. There is no law that says you have to take affirmative measures to ensure that your housing ads reach all races equally, BUT it is illegal to INTENTIONALLY skew housing ads to disproportionately target, or avoid targeting, specific races. More info here.
So would it be illegal for someone advertising an apartment for rent to use Facebook's service? Maybe. If they were using it to ensure they were reaching all races equally, that would likely be legal. Otherwise, likely illegal.
The same is true for ads for employment and credit. Other advertisers face no such restrictions.
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.
Apparently there is supposed to be a publisher's notice as well- I just checked CL and I don't see one. They do have a link though to report discriminatory ads. There are a bunch of other non-compliance issues as well as the lack of verbiage and logo in the ads themselves.
So this appears to be an issue of the internet catching up with physical world than anything nefarious on Facebook's part.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I may not have been clear. I'm simply saying that if I put my ad on Lifetime, men can still see it. If I use facebook's tool to filter out men, they can't see it. That's the difference. No one is preventing you from watching BET, for example. I was using the term minority sloppily/incorrectly. I wasn't trying to imply that targeting minorities is OK but "majorities" isn't.
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
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.
Really, is everyone here nuts?
Welcome to 2016.
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
I believe you are reading too much into the reference you cited. The document doesn't declare anything illegal (except to the extent Fair Housing Act that it is based on does). In the case of selective use of adverting, for example, it says the following [emphasis added] :
The document does not claim that such behaviors necessarily are violations of the Fair Housing Act. However, when HUD is evaluating a claim of a violation they are likely to look closely at such behaviors to insure that they don't lead to discriminatory results or have a discriminatory impact.
The word "may" is quite different from words like "shall" in laws and regulations and guidelines.
As well, review the 'Purpose' section in the introduction [emphasis added] :
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
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?
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!
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.
You're missing the point; it is not the advertising utilizing the facebook ad service that is accused of violating the law, it is facebook that is advertising the service of limiting the ads based on race. Facebook is the one offering the illegal service, not the person who buys it.
You identified a technical problem not in their claim, but rather in your understanding of it. It should have led you to self-correct.
What the fuck are you talking about? There's lots of ads targeting men, from Grecian formula through various razors, aftershaves and deodorants, not too mention clothing such as underwear. These ads are shown on the white male channels as well or does Fox only advertise to minorities and women?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
... 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]