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.

Comments

Re:Jews, blacks, and the disabled not welcome

[rickb928]

However, if you're looking to upgrade your rent, and know that flyers are a good way to find those gems, you can mostly drive through the neighborhoods you aspire to live in and find them.

On Facebook, if the ad is not distributed to you for whatever reason, you'll never know.

And that is the difference. A better RL analogy would be to find store owners or others hosting physical bulletin boards shooing away those they deem 'undesirable', rather than letting them see ads for anything they or their posters wish not seen by the 'undesirable'.

And that's plainly illegal. So should it be on Facebook. It's obvious discrimination.

Re:Jews, blacks, and the disabled not welcome

[cayenne8]

But to your analogy, it isn't putting it up on a big public bulletin board and shoo'ing away.

It is more like only putting it on bulletin boards in stores that serve potential customers/renters of the demographic you believe to be more suitable for your property (salary, dependability, potential social problems, etc).

In this case of FB...I believe they charge by ad, and how many folks it goes out to...right?

If that's the case, then the customer is wanting to only spend as little advertising $$ and possible, and therefore spend the limited advertising targeted towards those that he feels would be his best potential market.