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Facebook is Being Sued Over Housing Discrimination (fastcompany.com)
The National Fair Housing Alliance, along with three other nonprofit housing advocacy organizations around the country, has filed a lawsuit against Facebook over its alleged discriminatory advertisements. From a report: The nonprofits, over the last few months, created a fake real estate company and used the Facebook ad platform to place housing ads. According to the lawsuit, the NFHA was able to place advertisements that "[excluded] families with children and women from receiving advertisements, as well as users with interests based on disability and national origin." In the NFHA's press release, the organization writes that "Facebook's advertising platform enables landlords and real estate brokers to exclude families with children, women, and other protected classes of people from receiving housing ads."
The lawsuit follows extensive reporting from ProPublica that investigated these potentially discriminatory practices. For over a year, the journalism outlet tested various ways that landlords could place ads for housing, and found that the targeting allowed for many people to be kept out of the loop. Given Facebook's massive user base of over 2 billion users, the group believes that the social network is in violation of the Fair Housing Act.
The lawsuit follows extensive reporting from ProPublica that investigated these potentially discriminatory practices. For over a year, the journalism outlet tested various ways that landlords could place ads for housing, and found that the targeting allowed for many people to be kept out of the loop. Given Facebook's massive user base of over 2 billion users, the group believes that the social network is in violation of the Fair Housing Act.
They're being sued because people are not getting spam? O_o
In other news, I bought a fork, and attempted to stab minorities in the eye with it. Nothing the fork manufacturer did prevented me from stabbing minorities in the eye with the fork they made. Therefore, the fork manufacturer needs to give me millions of dollars.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
By the way, just before anyone takes this scant article too far and starts yelling at their companies' bulletin boards, classified ads, etc:
Finding roommates for a shared housing situation does not fall under the Fair Housing Act's provisions. It has been ruled a sufficiently personal and private matter by the courts that people are allowed to discriminate when they list to find a roommate.
However, I believe it only extends to male/female, not other protected characteristics. ( https://www.craigslist.org/abo... )
Facebook is the advertising *venue*, not the advertiser in this case. Facebook doesn't own the property for sale/rent. The people violating the Fair Housing Act in this case would be the (fake) real estate company...
Show me on the 1st Amendment bobblehead where the moderator touched you...
the National Fair Housing Alliance et al (NFHA) need to step back and breath. I don't see Facebook as having done anything wrong if NFHA managed to give Facebook a neutrally worded ad with filters restricting whom the ads were being shown to. Yes, that would be a sneaky underhanded technique, but claiming that "Facebook broke the law! Give me money!" for falling for that technique would be equivalent to a landlord putting up advertisements in local papers in neighborhoods that omit protected groups. Or for that matter, having a landlord put up any advertisement in any media, and omitting selected medias for the purpose of making it so that protected groups are unlikely to see the advertisement in the first place. I just browsed the Fair Housing Act and I don't see any where in it that claims that you have to target your ads to the entire population, I do see that you can't have an ad that states that protected groups are not wanted, but there's nothing there that says that you have to make certain that the ad is available to everyone.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The point is: you would never know if someone violated the fair housing act. Facebook is providing a a means to conduct illegal activity. The same principle applies to me as a software developer. I cannot create accounting software that lets people cook their books. I would go to prison. Everyone commenting on this is way off. These non-profits know their shit. If you don't like it, lobby to have the laws revoked.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Solution: don't post illegal ads
Thank you for contacting Facebook(tm) Support. Have a nice day!
Facebook can gladly provide the names of the authors of those illegal ads. The parties that create those ads should be held liable.
Except for the small detail that the Fair Housing Act makes printing, making, or publishing such ads illegal. Not just making.
Of course there are some "safe-harbors" that publishers can attempt to use use.
All advertisements should have prominent display of equal housing opportunity logotype, statement, or slogan as a means of educating the homeseeking public that the property is available to all persons regardless of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin.
Or perhaps include a statement with all advertising that states something like: All real estate advertised herein is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal to advertise "any preference, limitation, or discrimination because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination." We will not knowingly accept any advertising for real estate which is in violation of the law. All persons are hereby informed that all dwellings advertised are available on an equal opportunity basis.
On the other hand, potential evidence used against publishers are: selective availability of advertisements (this is what Facebook is doing); selective inclusion of equal housing opportunity statements or logos in different advertising campaigns; advertising with human models that cater to one segment of the population without complementary advertising in other segments.
Facebook's problem is that the tools they give to advertiser allow them to explicitly include/exclude certain groups of people when defining a target for their housing ads is basically the same as for any other ad. So by excluding people that have interests in certain areas (ethnic affinities, like Interest in Telemundo, or gender affinities, like women in technology) they can effectively hide the advertisements from people advertisers want to discriminate against. By providing these tools, they are basically accomplices in the violation of the Fair Housing Act, not a neutral party just providing an ad platform...
Looking at the wording in Fair Housing Act, it doesn't seem to prohibit targeted advertisement. It's illegal to refuse renting or selling based on a protected class when someone makes an offer, or mention such preference in the advertisement, or falsely claim that the housing is unavailable. However, targeted advertisement does not fall under any of those illegal acts because the advertisement itself does not mention the preference. One can argue that if someone finds housing through another way, then as long as the landlord does not refuse the offer on the basis of protected class, and the real estate agent or mortgage broker does not refuse the transaction on the basis of protected class, there would have been no violation.
But IANAL.
I once had a signature.