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Housing Department Slaps Facebook With Discrimination Charge (npr.org)
The Department of Housing and Urban Development is suing social media giant Facebook for allegedly violating the Fair Housing Act. From a report: HUD says Facebook does so by "encouraging, enabling and causing housing discrimination" when it allows companies that use their platform to improperly shield who can see certain housing ads. In the charging document, HUD accuses Facebook of unlawfully discriminating against people based on race, religion, familial status, disability and other characteristics that closely align with the 1968 Fair House Act's protected classes.
HUD also alleges Facebook allowed advertisers certain tools on their advertising platform that could exclude people who were classified as "non-American-born," "non-Christian" or "interested in Hispanic culture," among other things. It also said advertisers could exclude people based on ZIP code, essentially "drawing a red line around those neighborhoods on a map." "Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live," HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a statement. "Using a computer to limit a person's housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone's face."
HUD also alleges Facebook allowed advertisers certain tools on their advertising platform that could exclude people who were classified as "non-American-born," "non-Christian" or "interested in Hispanic culture," among other things. It also said advertisers could exclude people based on ZIP code, essentially "drawing a red line around those neighborhoods on a map." "Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live," HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a statement. "Using a computer to limit a person's housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone's face."
I thought his job was to open doors to schnooks and hide regulations. geez, Bizarro Thursday.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I'm the last guy to defend facebork, but... If someone misuses the advertising tools on a platform to break the law, wouldn't that person/company be responsible for breaking the law? Why would facebook be liable for having a wide range of advertising options available to people selling an enormous range of things, in which housing is a tiny percentage. This is akin to going after google because someone sent a hate email from gmail. -T
I wonder what else they allow their subscribers* do with their product**.
*anyone who will pay for their product do with their product
**(facebookers data).
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
While setting up the advertisements, require the poster to agree that "The advertising of my product or service is not restricted by any fair access law such as... blah blah blah. I understand that adherence to any applicable laws regarding... is my responsibility and not that of Facebook."
And that's all that should happen. Facebook shouldn't be fined or have to go to court unless the City of Los Angeles can be sued for "allowing" someone to post a room rental advertisement on a lamp post despite it clearly reading "Mexicans need not apply."
If someone misuses the advertising tools on a platform to break the law, wouldn't that person/company be responsible for breaking the law?
Yes, the advertiser is responsible. But the publisher is ALSO responsible, and this is not an "on the internet" thing. Newspapers have been held responsible for publishing illegal ads.
Why would facebook be liable for having a wide range of advertising options available to people selling an enormous range of things, in which housing is a tiny percentage.
There are specific laws about discrimination in housing, employment, and lending. The targeting that Facebook allows for other ads should not be allowed for these.
This is akin to going after google because someone sent a hate email from gmail.
No it isn't. First, sending hate mail is not illegal, while housing discrimination is. Second, Google is not providing a mechanism to specifically target hate mail at designated groups. Yet that is what Facebook is doing.
The only way I see FB being liable is if the selection for Housing rentals required you to select fields such as the age/race/etc of the people to show it to and did not have an option for "Show it to everyone." Which would not surprise me.
The question is do other mediums vet advertising for this by courtesy or by law/regulation? Newspapers, mailers, television, etc. Facilitating this activity may be covered by the law or at least covered by industry best practices, and we all know that Facebook has no concept of best practices, so the only way to enforce them is to force them via the legal system.
How do you allow advertisers to target, say, latin-dancing party ads to a market segment "interested in Hispanic culture" without permitting the kind of discrimination talked about? Do you just not allow the NOT operator in the targeting? or don't allow NOT in front of a set of protected categories?
Maybe it's just that simple. Thoughts, all you clever data types?
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
The question is do other mediums vet advertising for this by courtesy or by law/regulation? Newspapers, mailers, television, etc. Facilitating this activity may be covered by the law or at least covered by industry best practices, and we all know that Facebook has no concept of best practices, so the only way to enforce them is to force them via the legal system.
by positive targeting on stereotyped "white people" interests, I suppose.
I guess you have to ban all culture-indicating tags from housing and similar opportunity (e,g, employment) ad targeting.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
what category of product or service or influence campaign etc the ad is about.
That's some pretty heavy AI, unless they ask advertisers to self-disclose in some official form what kind of ad this is, which seems impractical to enforce.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Google is not providing a mechanism to specifically target hate mail at designated groups. Yet that is what Facebook is doing.
Google is providing a mechanism to target media to designated groups. That media could be in their interest and nobody else's, or it could be in everybody's interests but the entity producing the ad doesn't want to deal with those groups.
One of these is legal and the other isn't. Facebook's platform can't inherently discriminate between these two things at the moment: unlike with a newspaper, Facebook ads can go out without Facebook's human-driven review.
What if someone e-mailed child pornography through gmail?
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What if someone e-mailed child pornography through gmail?
If Google assisted the kiddie porn distributors by providing a mechanism to target people likely to have a preference for pre-pubescents, then I think it would be reasonable to hold Google partially responsible.
The people who place the discriminating ads are the ones who should be sued, not the advertising platform.
Actually, they should both be sued. From the charges themselves:
1. It is unlawful to make unavailable or deny a dwelling to any person because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin or disability. 42 U.S.C. 3604(a), (f)(1); 24 C.F.R. 100.50(b)(1), (3); 24 C.F.R. 100.60(a); 24 C.F.R. 100.70(b); 24 C.F.R. 100.202(a).
2. It is unlawful to discriminate against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of the sale or rental of a dwelling, or in the provision of services or facilities in connection therewith, because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin or disability. 42 U.S.C. 3604(b), (f)(2); 24 C.F.R. 100.50(b)(2); 24 C.F.R. 100.65(a); 24 C.F.R. 100.70(b); 24 C.F.R. 100.202(b).
So, as expected, it's illegal to place the ads. But then it goes on with...
3. It is 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 based on race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin or disability, or that indicates an intention to make such a distinction. 42 U.S.C. 3604(c); 24 C.F.R. 100.75(a), (b), (c)(1).
All of which is to say (and going back to your knife analogy), Facebook is no more allowed to publish illegal housing ads than a switchblade manufacturer is allowed to sell switchblades in my state. If someone with a switchblade goes on a murder spree, the manufacturer likely won't be on the hook for the murder, but they will be pursued for the crime of having sold an illegal weapon. Likewise, while Facebook isn't on the hook for the poster's crime, they are on the hook for their own crime of unlawfully printing a discriminatory ad.
When you are providing advertising you are responsible for how those ads are used on your platform. There are many products that are essential to participating in society. Housing, banking, credit, education and transportation would usually fall in this category. If you are advertising these products you have a moral responsibility to do so in a way that is not detrimental to society.
While we are investigating facebook though we also should go after credit bureaus for selling income and risk based zip code lists to allow targeted advertising of loans and credit. I suspect there are number of other companies also guilty of these types of systemic discrimination. Facebook didn't invent it, they just do it better.
Actually, if Facebook permits directing housing ads based on zip code, that's prohibited. They are liable if they knowingly permit the practice.
The solution would be to deny housing advertisers the ability to target or restrict based on prohibited criteria, that is, not giving them the options. A small matter of programming. And since they already scan and censor based on content, then even the content could be their responsibility. they do it in other reals, for other reasons. No excuses.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Mahhhhhh rights!!!! Wahhhhhh!!!
You repubtards are so fickle. Have owned the US for 200+ years, but still complain. Fucking pitiful.
Housing discrimination based on location (ZIP Code) is prohibited, commonly called 'redlining'. It has been used to both promote neighborhood racial discrimination and economic discrimination, and has been used by lenders, thereby including fair credit laws as violations.
It's not at all new. In fact, limiting MLS searches to specific area or ZIP codes is reasonable if buyers are looking for a specific location, but a salesperson should never discourage a potential buyer from an interest in a particular location. Most permitted communications would be focus on disclosable information, such as nearby airports, hazardous waste sites, planned road construction, but never on demographics such as average age, income levels, nationality, or even the proximity of churches or similar identifiable indicators of protected classes. It's even somewhat risky to point out proximity to services such as bus stops and government offices.
Fair housing laws are not as simple as many think.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Then you don't understand the law.
There is an EXPLICIT law that says that advertisers(facebook and google are advertisers) cannot target certain types of ads.
If they even ALLOWED the targeting, it would be illegal.
Similarly, many countries have laws that you cannot target children with smoking ads. If Facebook allowed tobacco companies to buy ads targeting children, they would be in deep shit
The problem is that Facebook naively didn't check the law about housing advertisement. This is a GIANT FUCK-UP on Facebook's part.
I understand that you want to default to the classic "safehaven" position, but that doesn't apply. Facebook isn't an internet forum when they post ads. They are an advertising company and advertising companies have been regulated for over a century.
No. We rationally acknowledge that they exist in multiple jurisdictions at the same time.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
sending hate mail is not illegal, while housing discrimination is
This brings up an interesting point. Apparently (courtesy of Jussie Smollet), mailing yourself threatening letters and using them in a false police report constiutes mail fraud, a Federal crime. I'm idly wondering if a person can commit mail fraud by way of email. There are plenty of articles about "email fraud", but they're mostly about how to avoid falling victim to a scam. I've never run across a reference to laws or criminal penalties for any kind of email fraud.
If someone misuses the advertising tools on a platform to break the law, wouldn't that person/company be responsible for breaking the law?
Yup. But that doesn't absolve anyone else of the legal responsibilities they may have.
Why would facebook be liable for having a wide range of advertising options available to people selling an enormous range of things, in which housing is a tiny percentage.
Because the law specifically includes the companies printing the ads. It's assumed that people will break/be ignorant of the law, so the law went a step further and placed a legal obligation on publishers running housing ads to abide by the same non-discriminatory terms. If you're a publisher who wants to run housing ads, them's the rules. If you don't like the rules, don't run housing ads (or other ads with similar conditions, such as job postings, financial offerings, etc.) and you won't be on the hook.
This is akin to going after google because someone sent a hate email from gmail
That analogy is so far off-base it's hard to know where to start. Setting aside the fact that hate mail isn't illegal in the US, the more important distinction is that e-mail in no way resembles the sorts of "notices, statements, and advertisements" covered by the Fair Housing Act. The FHA does nothing to prevent you from privately offering housing to someone on a discriminatory basis. For instance, if you want to privately offer your spare bedroom to someone you met through church/Black Panthers/Boy Scouts/KKK, the FHA isn't going to force you to advertise the room publicly instead. E-mail—which only goes to the individuals you specify—behaves more like a private conversation than as an advertisement, so it wouldn't be covered.
Actually, re-reading that last point of mine, I know what I was getting at, but I got it wrong when I typed it up. REALLY wrong. Obviously not a lawyer.
So, to correct myself: it's illegal to deny someone housing on the basis of race/religion/gender/etc., regardless of if you've posted an ad or not. Likewise, it's illegal regardless of whether you do so verbally or in a written form.
The point I was trying—but failed woefully—to get at is that there's nothing stopping you from offering a room to a specific person, even if you met that person through an organization that is discriminatory. There's nothing about offering it to them that is denying the housing to others on a discriminatory basis. Rather, it's being denied to others because they lack the personal relationship you two already have, which is an acceptable reason for excluding them. That said, posting an ad for a roommate at your organization's HQ but nowhere else would be illegal, since the act of doing so inherently discriminates against the people who are not welcome in your organization.
Hopefully those corrections and clarifications help. Sorry for the gross inaccuracies in my initial post.
That and I'm not entirely certain about the Zip code. Facebook is very big and advertising to everyone everywhere as apposed to only those in the area would be huge difference in cost especially for those with just a couple rental properties. There is no law requiring them to advertise in every news paper and not just the local paper or just the local radio.
Likes and dislikes were listed as parts of the abuse, such as a user liking (some cultural thing) that tend to be liked, or not, by certain races.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
They literally just settled a lawsuit from last year about this: https://nationalfairhousing.or...
Show me on the 1st Amendment bobblehead where the moderator touched you...
There are precedents that specifically protect online services from responsibility from such ads, where the publisher has been deemed to be the advertiser. See this article from 2008.
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
This will be very interesting to see play out in court.
That is not the out, there is one but that is not it. I would say what it is but the Facebook crew are a pack of privacy invasive cunts and they deserve to be prosecuted in every way possible.
I think it is particularly cruel to exclude people from certain postcodes. Seriously, WTF?, people live in a shitty neighbourhood and want to move out and a multi-billion dollar corporations tries to stop them, what a pack of arseholes. You could have moved to that postcode by mistake, not knowing how bad it is but once you have moved there in you are not allowed to move out, that is just fucking awful, they should be sued, heh, heh.
What Facebook were doing was promoting criminal activity by offering to serve a criminal outcome. It was illegal, Facebook sought to do a end run around the law and promote criminal activity (which is a crime), so that makes them an accessory to that crime, before the fact.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Sorry, allow me quote the very next sentence from the above-linked document. I left it out previously for the sake of brevity since I figured no one would try to split hairs over it, but clearly I was wrong:
Such unlawful activity includes “[s]electing media or locations for advertising the sale or rental of dwellings which deny a particular segment of the housing market information about housing opportunities because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin.” 24 C.F.R. 100.75(c)(3).
So, actually, it does say something about the circulation of ads.
This then leads to the question of who is doing the publishing? Is Facebook a publisher or are they the newspaper delivery truck and/or newsstand?
"or cause to be made, printed, or published [...]" would seem to eliminate any contention on that basis. Besides which, it's their platform from end-to-end. While there may be questions regarding which link in the chain of events is the actual act of "publishing", there's no doubt that they're the ones doing it.
Since your President wasn't executed, can we then conclude that he is not a traitor.
And read the context of you copy-pasta, which was carefully chosen to reflect alternate facts. Bob Mueller was saying that he didn't want to be the one making the decision and turned it over to the AG. The AG then made the decision. NO OBSTRUCTION.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
He wasn't dead, he was hibernating.
Did you see him during the presidential campaign? He was so sleepy.
Now he's had his nap and you're going to see a whole new Ben Carson.
But it's the original advertiser that presses the "submit" button that causes the ad to be published. If you ran a magazine but allowed anyone (for a price) to use your equipment to print additional pages and bind them into your magazine, who would be causing those pages to be published? Who published them? Is permitting the same as causing? I don't think these are easy questions with easy answers.