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

Don't single out Facebook

[fustakrakich]

Uber does it too...

Re:Don't single out Facebook

[galabar]

Uber can't force drivers (contractors) to accept fares. Otherwise, they'd be employees.

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:Don't single out Facebook

[fustakrakich]

It's not about forcing them to take their money. It's about 'forcing' them to provide their services to the public without discriminating. If the population was more balanced where one group doesn't comprise 85% this would not be an issue.

Re:Don't single out Facebook

[Dutch Gun]

It's not about forcing them to take their money.

Don't kid yourself. Ultimately, this is all about money. From the filed lawsuit:

Defendants’ conduct should be declared unlawful and enjoined, and appropriate penalties and monetary damages should be awarded.

"Racism, I say! I demand compensation for the pain and anguish of not being shown appropriate advertising as the law requires!"

How many zeroes do you think they'll be asking for to assuage their trauma?

Re:Don't single out Facebook

[ArmoredDragon]

It's about 'forcing' them to provide their services

You do know that there's a word to describe this, right?

Re:Don't single out Facebook

[RockDoctor]

People who take Ubers are not always sober, nor always fluent in English, but at least they know their own first name.

Assuming that they have a first name. Not all cultures do.

[Searches for link] Here it is : Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names, from which several relate directly to your incorrect assumptions (note from the numbers how far down the list your assumptions are ; there are much more fundamental mistakes you can make, e.g. that people have names) :

18. Peopleâ(TM)s names have an order to them. Picking any ordering scheme will automatically result in consistent ordering among all systems, as long as both use the same ordering scheme for the same name.
19. Peopleâ(TM)s first names and last names are, by necessity, different.
20. People have last names, family names, or anything else which is shared by folks recognized as their relatives.
21. Peopleâ(TM)s names are globally unique.
22. Peopleâ(TM)s names are almost globally unique.

Also, to predict one of your likely objections,

29. Confound your cultural relativism! People in my society, at least, agree on one commonly accepted standard for names.

Bogus law outlawing Thought-crimes

[mi]

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...

Re:Bogus law outlawing Thought-crimes

[mi]

It's only a freedom of speech issue if it is illegal to say certain things

It is much more than that. The 1964 law cited by TFA is used to tell Facebook, what they can and can not say — and to whom. It obviously abridges Facebook's freedom of speech. If we were to accept the general idea, that government may dictate, who speech can addressed to, we would allow the government to suppress speech altogether: there-there, you can still talk to yourself in the shower — that takes care of your First Amendment rights — but you can't say this and that to anyone else...

But, even by your standard, it is "illegal to say certain things" to some people, unless you also say the same things to others. Whether or not it is a manifestation of racism of Facebook and/or their advertisers, is irrelevant. Racists are no less protected by the Bill of Rights than the rest of us.

The much celebrated "civil rights" laws of the 60-ies have failed. It is time, they go the way of the similarly failed Prohibition.

Re:Bogus law outlawing Thought-crimes

[mi]

An action was taken that affected others. It's not a 'thought crime'.

What made the action illegal is the thought held by the "perpetrators". That makes it a thought-crime.

limitations on making death threats

Perhaps unlike "grabbing pussy", credible death threats are assaults.

committing slander

Slander has been a tort (not a crime) since well before the First Amendment was written. It was never in conflict with the Bill of Rights.

leaking intelligence to foreign governments

People gaining legitimate access to such intelligence voluntarily give up the right to this speech.

yelling fire in a theater

Should not be illegal either.

printing bootleg copies of movies and selling them

About half of Slashdot feels, this is a bogus prohibition too... More importantly, the concept of "intellectual property" has been with us since the Constitution was written, its authors still alive.

perjury

Speech under oath is different. And, like the above, it has been since before the First Amendment was passed — never seen as conflicting with it by the contemporaries.

So is the first amendment is only the most important thing when it supports the thing you want to support?

Contrary to your suspicions, I am not a racist. Let's keep the present company outside of the conversation.

Would that be your right to be a racist and actively discriminate against other citizens?

Yes, racists are no less entitled to the Constitutional protections than the rest of us — please, make sure to explicitly state, whether or not you agree with this, in any follow-up.

Re:Bogus law outlawing Thought-crimes

[ooloorie]

What you can't do, is engage in commerce with a broadcaster to only communicate in certain ways to certain people.

That's absurd. Of course, you can target your ads to certain groups. People have done that for a century. Minority groups are some of the biggest beneficiaries of this ability.

Re:Bogus law outlawing Thought-crimes

[sexconker]

Through the lens of the first amendment... any limitations on making death threats, committing slander, leaking intelligence to foreign governments, yelling fire in a theater, printing bootleg copies of movies and selling them, and perjury, are all obviously" unconstitutional too. And yet you probably support at least some of those.

No "lens" needed. It's written plainly and simply. Any limitations violate the first amendment and are unconstitutional.

I don't support any restrictions on speech, including whatever strawman you want to prop up. The government cannot restrict speech. You can be held responsible and culpable for the direct results of your speech, however. If you can't see the distinction, you're a useful idiot.

Re:Bogus law outlawing Thought-crimes

[ooloorie]

The much celebrated "civil rights" laws of the 60-ies have failed. It is time, they go the way of the similarly failed Prohibition.

They haven't just failed, they have been counterproductive. The effect of these various laws has largely been to keep homophobes, racists, and sexists in business and to turn overt discrimination into hidden discrimination.

Re:Bogus law outlawing Thought-crimes

[vux984]

What made the action illegal is the thought held by the "perpetrators". That makes it a thought-crime.

That's a pretty unconventional definition of thought crime. Where did you come up with that? I can't even find any reference that supports that definition, even as a 2ndary use of the term.

Your definition of 'thought crime' includes murder.

credible death threats are assaults.

Of course they are. What's your point? Didn't you make the argument that the first amendment trumps criminal law?

Slander has been a tort (not a crime) since well before the First Amendment was written.

Well duh. The first amendment was written to correct an oversight in the law before it was written. Hence... 'amendment'.

Should not be illegal either.

Its all fun and games until someone is trampled to death by a panicked mob.

People gaining legitimate access to such intelligence voluntarily give up the right to this speech.

1) What about the rest of the people? You don't need legimate access to intelligence to be a spy after all.
2) So now you can just give up your inalienable constitutional rights to get a job?

About half of Slashdot feels, this is a bogus prohibition too...

I didn't expect everyone to agree with all of them, hence lots of examples.

More importantly, the concept of "intellectual property" has been with us since the Constitution was written, its authors still alive.

Ding, ding ding! Precisely! Why its almost as if the authors didn't actually think the first amendment mean you could say anything you wanted anytime you wanted. Their were a bunch of assumed exceptions to it before the ink was even dry... slander, assault, copyright, espionage, perjury...

Speech under oath is different.

In that it is somehow not speech? Or that it is different in that it is like slander, assault, copyright infringement, inciting a panic leading to death, and espionage, a whole laundry list of exceptions to free speech that most everyone not only accept but even mostly agrees with?

Contrary to your suspicions, I am not a racist. Let's keep the present company outside of the conversation.

Sure.

Yes, racists are no less entitled to the Constitutional protections than the rest of us â" please, make sure to explicitly state, whether or not you agree with this, in any follow-up.

I explicitly do think they are entitled to the constitutional protections.
Where we seem to disagree is on what actions are actually constitutionally protected.

Re:Bogus law outlawing Thought-crimes

[mi]

Why its almost as if the authors didn't actually think the first amendment mean you could say anything you wanted anytime you wanted.

So, is anything protected by the Amendment, or is Congress really free to ban any speech it wants to — provided, some justification can be articulated?

users

[c]

three Facebook users have filed a lawsuit against the company

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.

Starting to not give a shit

[Tyr07]

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.

Re:Starting to not give a shit

[swb]

Fighting racism is a kind of magical machine that produces political power and moral righteousness as outputs. The people that benefit from it I think actually fear the end of racism because it will reduce their political power.

I think what's left at this stage isn't racial animosity but cultural animosity. It's not about skin color, it's about an amalgamation of cultural values that people object to. This would seem to explain things like anti-Islamic attitudes, where race is often quite ambiguous, or the near total evaporation of anti-Chinese racism as Chinese and other Asians have nearly completely integrated into mainstream culture.

What blacks seem to complain about anymore isn't skin discrimination, but cultural discrimination, and while there seems to be an inherent moral turpitude to discrimination on race, I don't know that cultural discrimination has that. I don't know that you can make people accept a culture in conflict with their own values.

Re:Slashdot double standard

[chipschap]

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?

Re:Slashdot double standard

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe because we're tired of you calling from "Windows" saying "Your computer are have virus".

ProPublica advertised an event, not housing.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Slashdot double standard

[Calydor]

It seems to me you have misunderstood the bashing going on, or at least understood it differently from how I understand it.

As far as I can tell, there are two kinds of bashing: The first is aimed at the companies laying off their workers and then hiring cheaper workers. Whether they're high-school drop outs, college grads, H1B workers, doesn't matter. It is the idea of getting rid of the workforce you HAVE so you can get someone CHEAPER that is bashed.

The second is bashing at the general skill level of the H1B workers, or Indian outsources in general. This is backed up by evidence of companies that started on the outsourcing fad and had to pull things back to America to get the quality back up to what they wanted. Again it is not bashing the Indians, but the skill level of the specific subset of people getting into that line of work.

Facebook is doing them a favour

[castus]

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

Re:Slashdot double standard

[iggymanz]

oh, complaining about corporations H1B use is "racist"?

complaining about the huge amount of scammers in India that buy blocks of cellphone numbers to appear as U.S. company or the IRS is "racist"?

Complaining about Indian workers receiving outsourced jobs who then sell proprietary information and customer information is "racist"?

How about the simpler explanation, that you have a chip on your shoulder

Another sham class action

[laughingskeptic]

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.

Re:Another sham class action

[Adambomb]

Exactly this. It seems more like a violation by the advertisers to make use of available options that are illegal in their specific cases when they should know damn well it is illegal for them to do so. Facebook providing the options in and of itself isn't what is at fault here as there are definitely certain products and services that appeal more to certain demographic.

Also given that there will be very easily associated keywords it should be very easy to provide the courts with advertisers for housing and lending who made use of these options.

note: no actual discrimination

[ooloorie]

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.

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.

Re:note: no actual discrimination

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what you mean by actual discrimination. Here is what the law says:
"Section 804(c) of the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3604(c), as amended, makes it unlawful 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 because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination. "

"Any preference" is pretty clear to me as well as "publish".
Facebook's problem is they can't just push this off onto ProPublisha because Facebook monitors postings for objectionable content. Accepting an illegal posting in itself illegal. Newspapers have the same problem once they sell an ad they are responsible if the ad is illegal not only for housing but for threats and extortions.

Re:note: no actual discrimination

[ooloorie]

Facebook's problem is they can't just push this off onto ProPublisha because Facebook monitors postings for objectionable content.

This isn't about illegal content, it's about ad targeting. Ad targeting isn't prohibited by law: read what you quoted.

Accepting an illegal posting in itself illegal. Newspapers have the same problem once they sell an ad they are responsible if the ad is illegal not only for housing but for threats and extortions.

It's not that simple. Newspapers are potentially liable when they have real estate sections and when they knowingly accept discriminatory ads. Since Facebook advertising is automatic and there is no separate real estate section, their situation is different. Facebook's liability is likely the same as for any other content: they need to remove it once they know about it. But, again, that doesn't even apply in this situation, since ProPublica isn't complaining about content, but about targeting.

Re:note: no actual discrimination

[AthanasiusKircher]

And if ad targeting is discriminatory for a specific product, then it's the advertiser, not the publisher, that's at fault.

I'm not sure this distinction would hold legally, given that the "publisher" (Facebook, in this instance) is specifically including a mechanism to do discriminatory ad targeting (if indeed the ad targeting is ruled discriminatory).

It's kinda like arguing that a hit man isn't "at fault" for targeting a person for assassination. After all, the employer hired the hit man. Moreover, the hit man gave him a run down of his services, even specifically offering to assassinate A or B or C to help the employer achieve his goals.

Is the employer responsible for ordering the hit? Sure. But the guy who actually killed somebody and even enabled the process by suggesting targets will surely be found culpable too.

Also, by the way, I'm assuming you would make a comparison between ad targeting and physical publishers (like magazines) that market to a specific audience. In that case, though, nobody's prohibiting a white guy from buying a copy of Ebony Magazine and viewing its ads. Advertisers may recognize that Ebony primarily sells to African Americans, and the publishers of Ebony may recognize that too. But it's not like when the white customer walks into the store, the clerk puts all the copies of Ebony behind the counter.

However, with Facebook's ad targeting, it can be like that. And that is potentially an issue, morally even if not legally. But I suppose it depends precisely on Facebook's targeting system. Suppose I'm a gay Asian woman. If there were a transparent way in Facebook's system for me to see that Facebook knows this and deliberately targets ads to me for that, and if I wanted to, I could choose instead to receive ads for straight Afro-Cuban men, then that seems easy enough. But Facebook isn't like that at all -- it deliberately shows or hides ads from me in a non-transparent fashion based on factors I can't know.

My guess is that this is just the beginning of lawsuits to come for such a system, particularly if it can be ever shown that some "deal" was offered to one race, but never offered to another or something.

Re:note: no actual discrimination

[ooloorie]

I'm not sure this distinction would hold legally, given that the "publisher" (Facebook, in this instance) is specifically including a mechanism to do discriminatory ad targeting (if indeed the ad targeting is ruled discriminatory).

There are many legitimate uses for ad targeting, so providing the mechanism isn't per se discriminatory. Furthermore, discrimination is legal in many contexts; for example, Hillary Clinton has targeted many of her ads to different racial groups.

Also, by the way, I'm assuming you would make a comparison between ad targeting and physical publishers (like magazines) that market to a specific audience. In that case, though, nobody's prohibiting a white guy from buying a copy of Ebony Magazine and viewing its ads.

The discrimination for Ebony Magazine is behavioral, just like Facebooks. That is, nobody is keeping you from behaving in a way so that these ads are targeted at you.

However, with Facebook's ad targeting, it can be like that. And that is potentially an issue, morally even if not legally. But I suppose it depends precisely on Facebook's targeting system.

Well, I don't use Facebook and I don't know how they target. On Google, however, you can see what information Google has inferred about you, and you can also turn off ad targeting.

My guess is that this is just the beginning of lawsuits to come for such a system, particularly if it can be ever shown that some "deal" was offered to one race, but never offered to another or something.

Well, Facebook and Google are big guys, and they have actively supported this SJW nonsense, so let them deal with the consequences. The rest of us can go on merrily discriminating the way we want. Personally, I am certainly going to continue to discriminate against homophobic religions, progressives, and anybody who accuses me of being a racist.

Re:note: no actual discrimination

[pauljlucas]

The key words are "that indicates," i.e., the text of the ad must indicate a preference or discrimination. It does not say anything about to whom you show the ad.

The law was written well before anyone could place housing ads on the internet. The closest non-internet equivalent would be if you posted your ad on telephone poles except in predominantly non-white neighborhoods. But even that isn't illegal. So if that isn't, why is not showing an ad to certain people online illegal?

You might be able to argue that it should be illegal, but, as written, it's not.

How did FACEBOOK discriminate?

[l2718]

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.

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.

Re:Its Not Discriminatory

[vux984]

the whole concept of targeted ads is not discriminator.

The whole concept of targeted ads is discriminatory. Targeting is practically a synonym for discriminating. Most discrimination or targetting isn't illegal though, but discriminating on race generally is.

So targeting people who like hockey by advertising during a hockey game instead of an NBA is legal. As is telling facebook to show the ad only to people who 'liked' hockey.

But telling facebook to only show an ad to white people ? That's probably going to end up being found not legal.

If by some chance a black person sees one of these housing ads its not like they will be stopped from buying a house.

Where is this part of your argument going ? That as long as a black person has a theoretical chance to buy a house the ad isn't illegal? How far are you willing to go with that? Can i put out an ad that says 'move here to a nice white neighborhood with no lazy loser black people' and 'we don't want any blacks' is that ok too? I mean... if by some chance a black person sees it , it's not like the ad itself stops them from buying a house.

Re:Slashdot double standard

[Serge_Tomiko]

Ridiculous. You hate people who hate Indians. Ergo, there are definitely situations where it is acceptable to hate.

You are advocating for total nihilism.

And the situation here is the same as it has always been. The vast majority of robberies of cab drivers are black men. The vast majority of cab drivers, including black men who are cab drivers, do not pick up black men because it is in their mind not worth the risk.

The reason this particular issue never gets more traction is relatively few cab drivers are white these days, and since only white people can be racist, the issue blows up once people like you realize it is non-white people discriminating against black people.

Really, the solution needs to be figuring out how to make black men less likely to commit crimes. How do you do that? I haven't got a clue. But no one is going to stop discriminating unless they are rich in lily white suburbs isolated from the realities of the world around them.

You're not special. You're one of a hundred million internet keyboard warriors typing such drivel makes them a good person.