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."

Comments

Re:Don't single out Facebook

[ArmoredDragon]

Strange times we're in that some people are suing to be able to see advertisements, and people want to use the law to force businesses that hate them to take their money.

Re:Canary in the coal mine

[ScentCone]

What are you even SAYING? I'm not laughing, I'm complaining. And it would be really entertaining if you would point out how my comment is bigoted.

Let's see ... I'll give this a try.

Let's say you're running a business that's selling hijabs to a primarily local ethnic minority in your town. You'd want to use FB's (or any ad syndicator's) tools to focus your advertising on an audience that's most likely to actually be interested your products. So, that would make you a racist fuckstick, according to you, right? No? I see.