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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?
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.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
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
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.
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.
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.
... I'll give this a try.
Let's see
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.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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?
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.