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Facebook Users Sue Over Alleged Racial Discrimination In Housing, Job Ads (arstechnica.com)
In response to a report from ProPublica alleging that Facebook gives advertisers the ability to exclude specific groups it calls "Ethnic Affinities," three Facebook users have filed a lawsuit against the company. They are accusing the social networking giant of violating the Federal Housing Act of 1964 over its alleged discriminatory policies. Ars Technica reports: ProPublica managed to post an ad placed in Facebook's housing categories that excluded anyone with an "affinity" for African-American, Asian-American, or Hispanic people. When the ProPublica reporters showed the ad to prominent civil rights lawyer John Relman, he described it as "horrifying" and "as blatant a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act as one can find." According to the proposed class-action lawsuit, by allowing such ads on its site, Facebook is in violation of the landmark civil rights legislation, which specifically prohibits housing advertisements to discriminate based on race, gender, color, religion, and other factors. "This lawsuit does not seek to end Facebook's Ad Platform, nor even to get rid of the "Exclude People" mechanism. There are legal, desirable uses for such functionalities. Plaintiffs seek to end only the illegal proscribed uses of these functions," the lawyers wrote in the civil complaint, which was filed last Friday. The proposed class, if approved by a federal judge in San Francisco, would include any Facebook user in the United States who has "not seen an employment- or housing-related advertisement on Facebook within the last two years because the ad's buyer used the Ad Platform's 'Exclude People' functionality to exclude the class member based on race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin."
Uber does it too...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Why is there such a double standard here?
It's not okay to discriminate against Blacks, Arabs, Chinese, Whites, and many others. However, if you're an Indian H1B worker, expect to be relentlessly bashed here because you're from another country. Why is it okay to hate Indians but not others? There's quite a double standard here. It's time that the rampant discrimination against Indians stop.
The allegedly-violated itself obviously violates the First Amendment and is thus invalid.
It is both unconstitutional, which should be enough in theory, and ineffective in practice — quite obviously, the interracial relations in this country continue to stink despite (or because of?) our having a half-Black President.
Whatever it was we tried for over 50 years to achieve racial harmony, is not working. Let's stop sacrificing actual rights to it...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
This sort of crap is exactly how we end up with (for example) the likely next president saying she wants to make gun manufacturers liable for the criminal use of their products. Issues like that sound like single-topic voter hot buttons, but they're not. The instinct to look for the nearest deep(er) pockets and blame the existence of a tool for how someone else uses it ... that's the sort of thing that this election is all about. Because this election is really about the Supreme Court.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Advertising looking for "favorable" traits can also be used to discriminate. Interestingly I have not seen any proof that discrimination occurred, but that the tagging system would allow such (obviously).
The SJWs deserve much pain as they eat themselves.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
A bunch of lawyers found three Facebook users who'd agree to have their names thrown onto a lawsuit so they could cash in on some of that big class-action legal fee action.
As usual, the winners will be the lawyers.
Log in or piss off.
You know it's not a perfect world and never will be.
Will the group placing the discriminatory ad be charged for violating the laws against discrimination?
I'm just starting to not care. You know, the rest of us, what ever color our skin is, background is, we're getting sick and tired of it.
Most of us are normal decent people regardless of skin color in Canada. Some people are assholes but they're not the many. We're all, tired, of your retarded, self centered, racist bullshit agenda. We're tired of hearing, we're tired of your retardedness, it's like as soon as people can stop being racist some corporate or government agency panicks and points out more racist shit like they're afraid people will get over it and start ignoring the little shits that still keep doing this shit.
There's eyes wide open posts that don't want 'white people due to cultural differences of people of color'. Seriously, if you're not white, it's okay because you're looking for like minded individuals and filters by skin color apparently makes that easier, but the other way around and it's fucking international news over a god damn housing ad.
Tell you what, you go fix the rest of the fucking world first, where tons of racist bigots exist in the largest populations, then come and deal with the 400 million people in north america. Go fix the 8 billion people populating the rest of the world first.
If I see that garbage I'll deal with it on the community level, where it matters, but this sensationalism distraction 15 minutes of fame internation super racism profile agenda garbage is sickening.
https://www.propublica.org/documents/item/3191165-Facebook-Propublica-Ad.html
The event was about fighting back if rent is illegally high. They targeted the event at a certain demographic.
I don't know how this becomes "Facebook practices housing discrimination". I don't use or care for Facebook, but this might just be a problem with their advertising system.
I'm not even sure if Propublica would be on the hook if they did make actual housing ads. Facebook is just the platform while Propublica is the one doing the discriminating.
This is not discrimination... that's like saying that subway is discriminating against aliens because they don't advertise on the moon... the whole concept of targeted ads is not discriminator.. its targeted! If by some chance a black person sees one of these housing ads its not like they will be stopped from buying a house.
The proposed class, if approved by a federal judge in San Francisco, would include any Facebook user in the United States who has "not seen an employment- or housing-related advertisement on Facebook within the last two years because...
This has to be the first time in history someone has been wronged by not being shown an ad
This is just as ridiculous as suing a wrench manufacturer because a few people may have used wrenches to commit crimes. I am a landlord and I know that you can't discriminate in housing. Any employer should also know. Why should Facebook have any liability for this sort of misuse of their system? Seems more appropriate for the Justice department to file a warrant with Facebook and go after every business (if any) that committed these (highly traceable) crimes. This reeks of an inventive attempt by attorneys williammost@gmail.com, jrf@atalawgroup.com and smkh@atalawgroup.com to generate a large class that will make the attorneys megabucks and the plaintiffs nothing.
I have no idea about Facebook.
But this bashing of social justice warriors has some merit. I tried quoting from Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles and the Salshdot "lamesness" filter kicked in.
And when you see that movie on lame TV, all the offensive language is edited out along with the farting - why the farting is edited out baffles me.
Without the words - and they are only words - the offends some people, the movie loses all meaning - it's intent was show bigots and racists as morons. So, by editing out the "bad" language, the SJWs make racism and bigotry acceptably funny - the complete opposite of Brooks' intent and what the SJWs want this World to be.
IOWs, the SJWs are making asses of themselves and supporting the very people they despise.
ProPublica posts a racist ad that violates the Federal Housing Act of 1964 on Facebook
ProPublica publishes a report about how Facebook is racist.
ProPublica approaches a lawyer with their own ad who says "OMG this is horrible"
Manufactured damages ensue, quite literally.
Note that ProPublica posted the racist ad themselves, and there was no actual discrimination.
Furthermore, this is about ad targeting by demographics, not housing discrimination; you know, like you don't want to target Hip Hop events to Norwegian bachelor farmers, or gay pride events to Black protestant church goers. And if ad targeting is discriminatory for a specific product, then it's the advertiser, not the publisher, that's at fault.
Suppose for the moment the story is true: people buying ad space from Facebook can ask the automated algorithm to only show their ads to certain demographics. Those who posted the ads may very well have violated the law, but how does it make Facebook responsible? They aren't checking each and every ad for legal compliance, after all, and the ads don't represent Facebook itself.
This is a moral point (Facebook shouldn't be held responsible for discriminatory content posted by users) but it may have legal teeth, depending on the previous contours of the liability shield of 47 USC 230.
They could only tilt at windmills harder if they moved to Holland and took up fucking jousting.
What the puck is this supposed to mean?
By the way, does anyone know how to login properly? :(
I am able to login, but then land at my user's data page, and after pressing 'save' land, logged in, on the slashdot front page, but when I click on this story, I am automatically logged out again.
It's a tool people. It allows bacon manufacturers to not piss off Muslims or Jewish people by spamming them with coupons for their products. It allows businesses to target their advertising dollars. If illegal discrimination is occurring, go after the parties discriminating, not everyone in-between. Is ProPublica going after Apple next if they manage to post a discriminating ad from an iPad?
Tilting at windmills means that you're attacking something as though it's an enemy when it's something entirely mundane. It's a reference to Don Quixote, in which the delusional protagonist attacks a windmill on horseback thinking it's a giant. Tilting is a jousting term, and Holland has quite a lot of windmills.
Wouldn't you want to know if the racist hates you and avoid them at all costs? Seems like this law sets people up for bad rentals.
Though the landlord will just disqualify them for some other reason. As in income requirements and huge deposits.
I discriminate based on income. Seems to keep the evictions down. Green is the only color I care about in rentals.
For example: credit cards. A card company will target people. Are you saying they must send a card offer to every adult in the USA?
Suing Facebook over this just seems silly. For one, can anyone show that this actually happened outside the ProPublica report? Did anyone bring it to Facebook's attention before filing a lawsuit? Does their TOS for advertisers include language about making sure ads aren't violating applicable laws? If so, they're already in the clear, but it shouldn't take much to get them to go a little further and block the option for real estate ads.
Facebook is a carrier and allows the users to determine what is allowed in their jurisdiction.
ProPublica are the ones who broke the law by making up that post.
Will they be punished?
Does Facebook need to keep up with the laws of every jurisdiction and turn on and off the flags for each type of advertisement based on where it is supposed to be shown or where the creator is at?
That should be the purchaser's responsibility.
Or any other service which allows you to post an ad without having another human check it first. All you have to do is write one discriminatory ad, screenshot it and sue. Or you can put an ad near any starbucks and sue because almost everyone who sees it will be white. What the researchers did was no different than either of these things. If such could become the basis of a lawsuit then we're about to flooded with them. This is lunacy!
IANAL, but the statute places restrictions only on the content of the advertisement. You may not place an ad for housing or rentals that indicates a preference for able-bodied, heterosexual, white, christian men. There's nothing which makes it illegal to target an ad toward a particular demographic.
Various white separatist groups and organizations like the KKK have websites. Is it illegal to post housing/rental ads on those websites because the traffic is going to be overwhelmingly white? Does the advertiser need to buy an ad on a BLM or Black Panther website to make sure that an equal number of blacks see it? Bullshit. As long as the content is non-discriminatory, the advertiser is free to target any audience they so choose.
Probably because they weren't trying to FORCE themselves into the living space of non-whites.
Funny that, isn't it...
An alternate use: You're selling pork products but don't want to market to people who are Muslim, Jewish, or vegetarian/vegan.
However, that's not what's happening in this case. The problem is that FB brought out the tool and the only restriction against using it for illegal discriminatory purposes is essentially a little checkbox (probably sans even the checkbox) saying "we promise we won't use this to illegally discriminate."
So what's needed is one or more of
a) Proper review of ads to ensure the tool isn't being used for illegal purposes. Probably not going to happen as human-reviewing ads costs money, and - if the USPTO is any example - still subject to error/ambivalence
b) A system to better restrict use of the tool from cases where it is likely to be discriminatory (not so easy given all the things that you could advertise)
c) A better system for identifying, flagging, and possibly prosecuting malicious/illegal use
Otherwise, it's great to have a choice of such a system, but not at the expense of it being so ripe for abuse. Some categories much less sense and are more open to abuse than others, as well.
Targeting housing ads to specific communities is actually not discriminatory under the act. There's already case law that says running housing ads in Spanish language newspapers exclusively is not discriminatory to non-Hispanics. Aiming ads at whites is the same story.
What the FHA prescribes is fairly narrow. Under 804(c) of the Fair Housing Act, 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." If the language of the ad is facial neutral you do not have a problem -- otherwise people would be running around suing every Spanish language print media company in the US as well as every other ethnic newspaper in the country that runs housing ads.
This lawsuit is really stretching the language of the act but then they aren't really expecting to win in front of a jury -- Facebook will settle this to end the negative press long before trial.
I challenge anyone to come up with a moral/ethical justification for such laws, that would not also apply to our selecting friends and mating partners.
Why can an employer be harangued over having disproportionately many Whites, but a girl, who rejected four Blacks suitors and went out with an Asian, is not prosecuted?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
That's what you get for trying to take the easy way out! Now he'll have to tell all those (insert relevant racist slurs here) that "he'll call them" or that "it's already taken", just like everyone else!
On a less cynical note, you can't fight racism that way. I'd rather want to know beforehand that some landlord is a racist bastard, it saves me time, he won't let to me anyway and I sure as fuck don't want to rent from him!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Only in America do we have people that are upset that they *DIDN'T* see an advertisement.
Another imagined injury to try to steal from others.