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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."
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.
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.
Why is it okay to hate Indians but not others?
It is not okay to hate Indians, or to hate anyone, for that matter. It is not okay to bash without reason, to discriminate, or to fail to treat someone with respect.
I distinguish this from the idea of protecting American jobs and wages, from preventing employers bringing in foreign nationals solely for the purpose of displacing higher paid American workers and depressing wages for those who remain. And those employers often don't treat the hired foreign nationals equally or with respect, either.
Are you perhaps fighting the wrong battle here?
Maybe because we're tired of you calling from "Windows" saying "Your computer are have virus".
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.
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.
They are employees, it's just that Uber don't want to admit it.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"