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Facebook Still Lets Housing Advertisers Exclude Users By Race (arstechnica.com)
AmiMoJo writes: In February, Facebook said it would step up enforcement of its prohibition against discrimination in advertising for housing, employment, or credit. Last week, ProPublica bought dozens of rental housing ads on Facebook but asked that they not be shown to certain categories of users, such as African-Americans,mothers of high school kids, people interested in wheelchair ramps, Jews, expats from Argentina, and Spanish speakers. All of these groups are protected under the federal Fair Housing Act. Violators can face tens of thousands of dollars in fines. Every single ad was approved within minutes. The only ad that took longer than three minutes to be approved by Facebook sought to exclude potential renters 'interested in Islam, Sunni Islam, and Shia Islam.' It was approved after 22 minutes.
...and if you make any distinction surrounding race at all, you sir or madam are a racist. I think it is high time we start classifying people as human and move the fuck on. Race is a poor data point; it assumes much and provides little knowledge. It is intrinsically unfair. Just stop using it. Strike it from all forms, all databases, and all modalities of information sharing and hopefully within a generation or two, it will only exist in history books.
Facebook "advertisers" trolling has only increased since the last election IMO. A friend of mine shared recently an ad that was injected into his newsfeed (from some site called Wish) that was essentially a picture of a small ziploc back filled with white powder, and a large straw. WTF? I've also seen "ads" that appear to be simply there to disturb people playing to their paranoias and delusions. Facebook has no mechanism for reporting abuse of the advertisements. I suppose the line between "fucking someone up in the head so they buy your product" and "fucking someone up in the head because you can" isn't distinct enough for them to care. After all, we're the "dumb fucks" who trust them, right zuckface?
The Fair Housing act begs to differ: https://www.hud.gov/sites/docu...
Folks can debate whether it should or should not be a law all they want, but the issue of legality is pretty clear.
The Act very clearly covers advertising as well in section 109.5
109.5 Policy.
It is the policy of the United States to provide, within constitutional limitations, for fair housing
throughout the United States. The provisions of the Fair Housing Act (42 U.S.C. 3600, et seq.)
make it unlawful to discriminate in the sale, rental, and financing of housing, and in the provision
of brokerage and appraisal services, because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status,
or national origin. 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.
However, the prohibitions of the act regarding familial status do not apply with respect to housing
for older persons, as defined in section 807(b) of the act.