Slashdot Mirror
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.
But Bomb throwing Islamics get more scrutiny before not being welcome?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
It's not illegal to choose not to tell certain people that you have property you would like to rent. It's illegal not to rent to them because of their membership in a protected class, but you can't force somebody to advertise to them.
Is Zuckerborg from Mississippi or something?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
If you are renting a 3rd floor apartment in a building without an elevator, then people interested in wheelchair ramps probably also aren't interested in your apartment.
...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.
I am NOT a FaceBook used..
But when you sign up, do you have to tell them your race, or religion?
most rental apartments have a covenant: "no slashdot subscribers" and facebook can enforce that easily.
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?
I should be free to decide to whom I want to rent it to on any criteria I damn well please.
cause iz donzt wants to rentz to any whities.
Those guys are their CUSTOMERS!
And they PAY for being r-a-a-cist!
FB's SJW ways go out the window when money matters.
Freedom of association is a Human Right!
Something that "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" makes clear when Facebook set up their advertising system.
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.
The reviewer was on break for lunch?
At no point did the ads say they wouldn't rent to the people they weren't targeting. If the rental process came to the final decision and people were excluded based on race, religion, gender, etc then there would be a case. At this point, it's an advertiser looking to target a specific type of people their marketing has identified as being the best audience for their product. Do you see adds for Pokemon during the evening news, ads for high blood pressure medication during Saturday morning cartoons? No, because it would be a waste of advertising money as your target audience is not in those groups. While I understand Pro Publica wrote the initial article, ArsTechnica shouldn't have run it. They need to not be in the identity politics game. Once you chose a side with an article like this, you're in it for life, and that's not their business model. Unfortunately, it appears Ars is being converged and it's a sure sign to find a new source of tech news and information. With crap like this, Taylor Swift is looking smarter and smarter each day.
According to this link http://civilrights.findlaw.com... A landlord must treat every tenant equally. Illegal discrimination occurs when the landlord: -Includes preferences or limitations in a rental advertisement - Denies the availability of a available rental dwelling or steers renters to a certain area based on race The Fair Housing Act covers both tenants and prospective tenants. I would think those two points are pretty clear that Facebook is doing something illegal.
Sent from my TARDIS
This whole issue reads quite differently when phrased differently. I'm not sure what is really going on here, and don't condone any type of racism, but consider an alternate interpretation. Something like "ProPublica uses machine learning algorithm to focus advertising dollars on high ROI cohorts". After all, one might be able to make the same claim about any company who advertises during the Grey's Anatomy time slot compared to those who advertise during SWAT. If we juxtapose those demographics and uncover sharper differences, who are we to condemn? The point being that there is no accusation about actually rejecting housing applications from certain demographics.
But if you're renting out a lot of properties, and you're deliberately excluding handicapped people because they're handicapped, you're violating the FHA.
There is a difference between "this apartment is not handicapped accessible" and "we do not rent to handicapped people".
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
In Great Society 2.0, governrment rewards law firms that find violations in small businesses. This is why you may have seen two railings on stairs, because the original one was a few inches too high or low, and a law firm found it and made the business pay them $11,947 as a violation finders' reward.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
The fine they would get would be small in comparison to the advertising revenue they're getting, so there's no reason to stop breaking the law.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Those great discount credit card offers you get in the mail aren't sent to everyone. The credit card company bought a profile of your neighbourhood from a credit bureau before mailing them out.
Honestly, if someone doesn't want blacks, whites, or muslims in their house I don't see the big deal.
I don't want to rent to students because they always fuck up your house, and you basically have to rip it all out and rebuild when they leave.
Is that somehow wrong too?
In February, Facebook said it would step up enforcement of its prohibition against discrimination in advertising
but hasn't
By having a sidewalk on both sides of a street, it is possible for one resident to potentially determine the race of another and cross the street. This design facilitates overt otherism and needs to be outlawed.
Back in the 90s, Colorado had our infamous amendment 2. It basically said that state and local gov could not forbid this kinds of actions and that ppl would have no legal recourse. However, that version was after the far right got a hold of it. The ORIGINAL version said that for roommates, landlords owning 4 or less properties, or businesses smaller than 12 employees, COULD discriminate in this fashion, BUT, that all others COULD not. IOW, if you worked for a company where it was possible to move you away from idiots, then you should not be discriminated against.
Likewise, for a roommate situation, the last thing I would want to do is move into a place in which the roomie HATES me from the gitgo. That will make for a nightmare situation
The ability to place that Ad should be similar. If it is roomate or small ownership, then by all means, allow somebody to avoid getting into bad situations.
BUT, with medium to large businesses, absolutely NOT.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
It's possible to get Facebook to give someone LESS ads if they can convince Facebook that they are a minority that should be excluded from certain types of ads?
If anything, I'd say that's discriminatory against people who don't fall into a minority category.
So.... how does one get Facebook to think that you are a minority?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What this does is save the potential renter time. Because if some bigot doesn't want to rent his apartment to someone who is (insert person group here) he WILL find an excuse not to. And there is no law that could even possible force anyone to rent a certain apartment to someone specific. This isn't a bar where more than one person at the same time gets in where you can easily point at discrimination when he's turned away while some other person not belonging to the same group get in.
In other words, even if they are prejudiced, you'll have a hard time proving it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If I donâ(TM)t want to rent out to lesser races then I shouldnâ(TM)t be forced to. Why would I want blacks committing crime and not paying rent? Why would I want Muslims blowing the place up? Why would I want Mexicans stinking the place up and being lazy bums?
Rent only to hard working whites!
Advertisement laws should *protect* consumers, like children, but can we really tell people who they can advertise to? It's not hurting anyone.
Social Justice!
Cool, so all I have to do to get rid of all ads on Facebook is to transform into a hispanic black muslim white jewish low-income transvestite parent of juveniles?
Consider it done!
This challenges the very business model of all social networking sites. Their revenue comes from targeted advertising. Are some types of targeting illegal then? Who decides which types? This could be a disaster for Zuckerberg.
COE
Let's say I have a property for rent and I discriminate against protected class tenants on Slashdot in a posting, is Slashdot responsible and accountable for advocating this behavior in court? I think not. If someone knows different, provide specific evidence for your claim.
We'll make great pets
the easy answer is accept able applicants and filter privately. duh.
HR has been doing that for 50 years + and male/female dating via Darwinian methods has been doing that for 30,000 years plus.
a neighbor of mine was leasing a building, and the trolls for a local ADA advocacy legal group came buy with a service dog and came in.. little did he know he was being tricked and trapped into their game to see if they could sue him for discrimination because of a service dog... it was close but he said thank you and did not accept their application or return their call... there.. oh.. i must have lost your number...
Every other category of exclusion and add targeting is ethically problematic as well except for the one that means interested in my product. Racism is on only the tip of the spear for what facebook has to offer.
Advertisers would sell to their own worst enemies if they could make a buck off of it.
... those are different stories.
If a company doesn't want to promote itself to a specific ethnicity it is most likely because they don't think the target wants to buy anything.
If that is true, both sides are better off.
Hiring, marriage, cliches
Ads are like weeds. Keep em out civilized areas. If we want to see them we know where to look.
What, no discrimination against Dentists? Next they'll be saying they should have their own schools!
Perhaps ProPublica shouldn't be discriminating in asking to place the ads in the first place! It's bad enough the government can act as 'thought police', we don't need FB to do their job for them. If ProPublica wants to be outed as discriminatory bastards that's up to them, we can stay away from anything & everything they are part of (parent companies etc.). Thanks for outing yourself ProPublica.
I guess they wanted to make sure all the FB doors were locked and alarmed before approving that one?
Check his posting history. You'll see plejty of trolling. Them mod him down to -1 to help stop his trolling.
So...pretty much, everything is racism nowadays, right?
Stupid times we live on.
This whole inclusion thing + bad use of information media is simple driving me nuts.
Not to mention ADA. If you operate at a big enough scale, you have a legal obligation to make your properties handicapped accessible, when feasible.
Some editor is on a roll today! Check out the "Apple hates opening stores where minorities live" article too.
Facebook lets any ad target people on a racial basis. Any advertising agency lets an ad target people on a racial basis. This is standard practice in advertising.
Here's something crazy and hard to believe for a lot of people:
Different racial groups are different. There are trends in behavior that correlate tightly with race. In other words, race isn't just made up. It's real! Whoa!
The foundation of the objection this article exists to voice is that 'all races are the same' so treating them differently in any way is wrong. That is the message that an unaware reader has crammed into their head.
All of these groups are protected under the federal Fair Housing Act.
Are white people not? That is the implication from the sentence. Cherrypicking the aspect of the truth that serves its narrative best. It's supporting the mindset that it's minorities against whites in this world. In reality, ALL PEOPLE are protected.
If we keep accepting narratives like this in our media, it really will be minorities against whites, with misled minorities as the aggressors.
Submitter: AmiMoJo
our resident social justice shill
It was nice to see that fool getting ravaged with downmods in the Damore article. However it is much, much too often that this pernicious bastard gets modded up for completely illogical and politically motivated messages.
How much do you want to bet that there are paid posters here that farm mod points to mod people like this up and mod down any dissent? With any gameified system with anything at stake there are always going to be "gold farmers".
How hard would it be to hook up a chat bot to fish for mod points on a dummy account?
This. FB scales through automation. An ad like this would have been rejected by most humans at newspapers in the past.
Now that the humans are no longer looking at ads, you have this result.
Why is this surprising?