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HUD Files Complaint Alleging Facebook Ad Tools Allow Housing Discrimination (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has filed an official discrimination complaint against Facebook, saying the site's dizzying array of advertising tools makes it simple for advertisers to illegally exclude wide swathes of the population from seeing housing ads, Politico wrote on Friday. In a press release, HUD wrote that Facebook's "targeted advertising" model more or less constitutes a way for said advertisers to skirt the federal Fair Housing Act, specifically by excluding members of protected categories: "HUD claims Facebook enables advertisers to control which users receive housing-related ads based upon the recipient's race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, disability, and/or zip code. Facebook then invites advertisers to express unlawful preferences by offering discriminatory options, allowing them to effectively limit housing options for these protected classes under the guise of 'targeted advertising.'"
Specific examples cited by HUD included showing display ads "either only to men or women," as well as preventing users flagged as interested in disabilities-related topics like "assistance dog" or "accessibility" from seeing display ads. HUD also said that the targeted advertising tool can be used to prevent people interested in specific religions or regions from seeing ads, as well as "draw a red line around zip codes and then not display ads to Facebook users who live in specific zip codes." The complaint is just a complaint, but it does start an official process that will either end in Facebook reaching a resolution with federal officials or a lawsuit. CNN Tech notes that the National Fair Housing Alliance is simultaneously suing Facebook for the same reason. "Facebook is trying to dismiss the suit by claiming it has limited liability for user-generated content, though HUD and federal prosecutors claim the site operates as an internet content provider with respect to housing ads and therefore is subject to civil rights law," reports Gizmodo.
Specific examples cited by HUD included showing display ads "either only to men or women," as well as preventing users flagged as interested in disabilities-related topics like "assistance dog" or "accessibility" from seeing display ads. HUD also said that the targeted advertising tool can be used to prevent people interested in specific religions or regions from seeing ads, as well as "draw a red line around zip codes and then not display ads to Facebook users who live in specific zip codes." The complaint is just a complaint, but it does start an official process that will either end in Facebook reaching a resolution with federal officials or a lawsuit. CNN Tech notes that the National Fair Housing Alliance is simultaneously suing Facebook for the same reason. "Facebook is trying to dismiss the suit by claiming it has limited liability for user-generated content, though HUD and federal prosecutors claim the site operates as an internet content provider with respect to housing ads and therefore is subject to civil rights law," reports Gizmodo.
It is human nature and a personal goal to want to be able to have a say in what happens in your home, or your property. It is a societal goal to make sure that harmony and opportunity are available to people who live in a country.
Government is responsible for the 2nd goal, because people's individual desires tend to compete with societal desires. And frankly, government is failing in its job / losing ground in the fight for its purpose in this technology age. Either because our state / federal governments are paralyzed by anger from everyone in a post-boom economy, or that simply technology companies move too fast and are trying to displace the functions of government in its absence.
Either way, FB doesn't stand to lose too much. The order of magnitude of HUD fines for such behavior are in the tens of thousands of $. Petty cash. And FB will be fighting it the entire way.
Traditional advertising for housing has the same restrictions. You cannot exclude based on race, etc. For example you cannot distribute advertising pamphlets for housing only to white people. That is basically what hyper targeted advertising is: handing out advertising to individuals.
Contest sites have to be careful who they hand a million dollars to...
Gun sites need to follow 51 sets of laws (federal plus 50 states)...
Radio streams have to obey local rules on products and prices....
Google has to target people who will buy the product, they can't just randomly send ads around...
Facebook has to follow regulations on ads too... sorry, no exemptions to the laws about what you could advertise in the newspaper.
If you can't see the Facebook ad, how do you know the house is for sale? A discriminator can advertise only on Facebook, and then set the blocks against whoever, and assure the sale isn't an equal opportunity.
This is why house ads show up in the local newspaper... something everyone should have access to.
Facebook is hitting the wall when it comes to growth... the hot new app appears to be called "Delete your account!"
Um, HUD *IS* part of the Trump Administration.
Yes, this tool could be used to discriminate. But that's the point of the tool. If you are selling women's jeans it's perfectly legal to target a particular audience, i.e. women. Do they have any example of using this tool to illegally discriminate against a protected class? If so, file a lawsuit. Otherwise, stop speculating about what it could be used for.
Newspaper readers have a highly skewed demographic.
False equivalence: you can buy a high end magazine if you're a lower class person. On fpthe internet, once you've been profiled, you can't get out ofthe bubble crafted for you by others.
You can set a private profile and browse from somewhere besides your home I.P.
It gives you a very different view of the world.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
It's people like you who give the Democrats such a bad name.
Sure you can: you can turn off targeted advertising, or you can give false demographic information.
Newspaper readers have a highly skewed demographic.
Perhaps for subscriptions. But a person actively searching for an apartment, a house, a job, etc may make an anonymous purchase of a paper at vending machine, newsstand, grocery store, convenience store, etc.
And likewise, you can make a free Facebook account with any demographic information you like.
Yes, in the sense that you cannot state discriminatory terms in your ad.
I am aware of no precedent for this claim, nor does the law say that. So where does your belief that this is the law come from?
Read the whole sentence: or you can give false demographic information. If you want to see what kinds of ads are targeted to transgender Asian midget billionaires, just enter that as your demographic information.
What "various regulations"? I'm not aware of any regulations that force me to make sure my listing reaches a "sufficient audience". Many rental listings appear just on Craigslist, or among Facebook friends, or on college mailing lists.
You probably aren't aware of much either. The Act includes marketing and advertisements, not just the advertisement itself. Hence the lawsuit. Did you think HUD didn't think this through? I am always amazed at how dumb the commenters are here.
It's not that "people" got it in for FB. FB stepped into it with Alex Jones. The moment social media companies start making editorial decisions (or at least look like it), they stop being open platforms. And now they carry partial responsibility for what's posted on them. The whole "violation of TOS" won't fly in court because Alex Jones didn't do anything that millions of other posters didn't do. FB wants to be a town square, but it wants the right to remove any barker it wants from the town square. But barkers have 1st Amendment rights. Except that FB is a private property, right? Sure. But then it's not a town square and has liability for its content. And if it has liability for its content, get ready for the law suits.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
When your TDS goes so far that even when they(Trump various offices where he's appointed people) do the right thing, your mind conjures up something in order to reinforce that social and political viewpoint so you can feel smug.
What a fucking shitty way to live.
Om, nomnomnom...
Did you think HUD didn't think this through?
The head of HUD almost certainly didn't think this through; he was probably too busy shopping for dining room furniture. However, there are probably a quite a few lower-level people hanging on there who still have some shred of integrity.
Facebook forbids fake accounts. They will delete them.
It only needs to last long enough to get the home, the job, etc.
Well, at least Trump did not (yet?) start any of the many wars Hillary had promised. That's a big plus in my book.
Why would the Trump Administration do that? After all, Facebook is currently attempting to design a system whereby they can silence Trump supporters.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Thank you, that is the best, most succinct explanation of the problem currently facing social media companies: they want to be free from liability for what people post, but they want to limit what people post to what they consider acceptable.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The problem is that there exists a law explicitly saying that you are NOT allowed to do that.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
__FaceBook prediction #312__ By 2034, of the 41% of deceased profiles, 22% provide "click farm" jobs for 90.3 million children in developing nations, though any reliable approximation of deceased, but "vital", users will be known only to FB's legal department and a closely guarded trade secret. Thank Colossus for mrwireless' post. I am not surprised there are some on /. asserting on a public forum not to speculate about how proprietary *tools* are *utilized* by FaceBook's-feudal-warlord-culture designed to impress *Mr.* Zuckerberg. Keep it up, scuzzballs, and the government itself will be forced to hire watchers, and then watchers to watch the watchers (as socialist countries choose to do) because the abuses are worse every quarter.
For slashdot yutes: (1) Real ID accounts were a battle ending in a stale-mate ten years ago now, and (2) You're deluding yourself if you believe your casual comprehension of demographics, its methods and metrics, are greater than teams of corporate lawyers and quants all over the globe. What is a demographic? Begin with the Domesdary Book and don't stop looking over your shoulder, subject.
Would were! Should is! Could be! And live a hundred times three.
Personally I think this "discrimination" stuff has gone too far. People should be able to advertise to people who are not disabled (think sport related stuff) and people should be able to advertise to a specific race or language (think the latest season of a spanish soap opera) or they should be able to advertise to an age range (think about a barbara streisand movie) or to a specific sex (what about tampons and eye pencils). I think advertisers as whole need to address this with government so the platforms stop getting crap. But if you cant advertise a place where dogs are not allowed to people who dont have dogs, or where a lady cant look for a female room mate, or a spanish speaking only person cant look for a spanish person... seriously, your just costing those people money, the spanish person will just deny those who dont speak spanish, and the anti dog guy will tell the dog owner the place is taken. wasting both the advertisers time and money, and the respondees time and probably money. The more money advertisers have to spend (due to lack of targeting) the more the consumer has to pay.
The act makes it illegal to state a preference for or against a protected class. It does not make targeted advertising illegal as far as I can tell.
You claimed that "For example you cannot distribute advertising pamphlets for housing only to white people." I'm asking you where in the law that is based and whether it has ever been enforced. I mean, there are regulations like that, for example, for job postings when hiring foreign workers.
I'm sure they did think it through: HUD employs a large number of people with a social justice agenda, and such people have a long history of pushing legislation way beyond what it says or was originally intended to accomplish.
Oh, me too! Just look at you, for example: obviously unfamiliar with the history of the expansion of the regulatory state, and incapable of pointing to the text of the law that shows that what you claim is illegal is actually illegal.
The credit bureaus sell credit scores by zip code. Other companies sell subscription information. In the days of spam snail mail advertising companies did this kind of thing all the time. Want a new credit card or a loan, well unless you lived in the right place you wouldn't know about the best deals.
Doesn't matter, the point is that the suggestion is already forbidden.
And discrimination in advertising homes, jobs, etc is also forbidden. Yet it happens, similar story for the countermeasure.
do we know other forms of advertising are not being used? seems a mix of ads is acceptable
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
This has been tried against newspaper publishers, and upheld.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You can put in any demographic information you like, but does FB follow it.
For example, your IP address is from a 'poor' neighborhood.
Or, you don't have friends with any other high class FB users.
Well, then you should have no trouble citing a case, because I can't find any.
How is that a racial discrimination issue? Are you saying that I'm not allowed to advertise expensive products to rich people and cheap products to poor people anymore?
United States v. Joyce, 2008
United States v. Penny Pincher, Inc., 2011
A related suit, claiming that using predominantly white-skinned models in advertisements constituted discrimination by presenting the appearance that the market was assumed to be predominantly white... And it seems to have been dismissed, apparently on technical grounds, like standing and such.
By the late 80s it was well known, to landlords at least, that trying to advertise with illegal restrictions would not be tolerated by mainstream newspapers, and soon after even the 'little' specialty papers had to police their classifieds. This has, predictably, also been the rule in new media, as Craigslist etc had to also police their listings.
If you cared to read the Act, you would see it is sufficiently specific to make it clear, you cannot advertise housing with illegal restrictions.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
You're just giving examples of what isn't in dispute, namely that the Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to state a preference against a protected. A violation can be determined simply by reading the ad.
Targeting is a completely different activity from putting discriminatory language into an ad. That is, with targeting, the ad contains no discriminatory language, it simply doesn't reach certain demographics. Nothing in the Fair Housing Act, nor any case law that I can find or that you cite, seems to prohibit targeting an otherwise nondiscriminatory ad.
If I'm interested in seeing eye dogs, I might not necessarily be blind.
I could be a dog trainer, or an animal lover interested in the topic. I know a lot of people like this.
Being interested in Islam or Buddhism doesn't necessarily make me either thing, and liking rap music doesn't really say anything about my ethnicity. Although, they might have a point on the zip codes.
Time will tell.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
NJ Supreme Court has ruled that shopping malls have replaced town squares and that when it comes to speech they have the same responsibilities to accommodate it as a public square would. It was a case about NJ malls. The mall owners wanted to have a right ask anyone to leave if they tried to distribute pamphlets on the malls' sidewalks. The NJ Supreme Court sided with those who wanted to distribute the pamphlets. I don't know if the case made it to SCOTUS. According to https://educateforlife.org/fre..., 34 states have laws which mandate sidewalks to be available for public speech use (which is even further on the side of permissive speech than the 1st Amendment). California is one of those states. And I believe FB is domiciled in California. So the principle holds. If they are disallowing speech in a way that California malls cannot, then they are making editorial decisions.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I don't use Facebook. I agree with you about their strategy, though. However, your post starts off with a rather far-left set of claims about Infowars. I believe Alex is a complete fool/idiot, their "news" sucks, and it's full of boring conspiracy theories, but "trying to dehumanize transgender people" sounds like you have a far-left pet political agenda. What did he actually do, call them "trannies" or something? Do you have actual evidence for your claims? I only see some guy named French who works at the New York Times (an organization demonstrably hiring racist anti-white staff who the left has twisted into knots trying to crawfish an explanation as an "anti-troll") who makes that claim about Alex Jone's "language". I'd like to see what exactly the NYT author means because it sounds like typical left-wing over-sensitivity, to me unless I can see WTF the conspiracy nutjobs actually did to earn this claim. Compare Sarah Jeong's racist tweets to Alex Jone's (supposedly) "dehumanizing language" and I kinda gotta wonder who is the most deserving of the title "racist" or "dehumanizer".
If human rights are a "left" issue then yes, I'm far left. I fully support human rights, including for trans people.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
So, you'd extend to transgender people the false/non-existent right not to be offended? Human rights sounds great until you try to define what they are to different groups. The left seems to think human rights are "anything we say they are" and the right seems to think "What? No such thing!"
I hope it occurs at some point to both your buddies in the Antifa crowd and the far-right KKK types that you can't have free speech coexist with bullshit-right-to-not-be-offended. If hurling a pejorative or label at someone is enough to "dehumanize" them, then they should grow a thicker skin. The world can do a helluva lot worse than call you names, and stopping trolls and bigots with censorship usually just empowers them and gives them more publicity when you fail. I'd find a new hobby. For example, helping people who are hungry find something to eat seems to be a lot more noble than helping transgender people avoid being called something mean spirited. That's why most people roll their eyes when the topic of "trans rights" come up. It's not that they are all bigots, it's that most of them are thinking 'what a fucking waste of time'. Maybe that's just me, I dunno.
So just to be clear, are you complaining about considering mis-gendering a trans person to be a form of abuse?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You made the argument that FB made their decision about Alex Jones in order to maximize their profitability. If FB determined that adopting the opinion that there is only 2 sexes on their platform would maximize their profitability, would you be equally ok with FB "misgendering" people who do not fully fall into M or F gender? They are a private company and they are simply a platform for expressing opinions which (according to your own argument). So would that be a position they could adopt for profitability and would that not amount to editorial decision-making? You see why this is a problem, do you not? They either make editorial decisions or they don't. On this particular point, the dichotomy is not a false dichotomy, but a genuine it's-either-one-or-the-other dichotomy.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I'm basically saying you are a whiner without a real issue. Yes.