Their business is "I know ABCDEF about people, who would you like me to distribute your content to?"
Distributing content to people along ABCDE and F demographics happens to be legal in almost every case. The exception is specific housing discrimination laws that prevent filtering on ABC, etc.
It is outrageously unreasonable to expect Facebook to be responsible for the specific laws surrounding advertising for their customers. They provide targeted advertising. If their client targets demographics using an advertising strategy that happens to be illegal within their own industry, the responsibility is on the client/landlord, not Facebook. This is very much akin to blaming Microsoft for someone hacking from a Windows PC, or blaming the phonebook for a Chinese person emphasizing cold calls to the "Lee" portion of the book. If their actions are illegal, so be it, but the automatic assumption that the platform is responsible for the content that their users produce is fundamentally flawed.
Traditionally platforms benefit from safe harbour by being neutral, but the whole point here is that the decision about who to show the ads to can only be made by Facebook.
https://fairhousing.com/legal-research/hud-resources/adverti...
Section 804(c) of the Act prohibits the making, printing and publishing of advertisements which state a preference, limitation or discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin. The prohibition applies to publishers, such as newspapers and directories, as well as to persons and entities who place real estate advertisements. It also applies to advertisements where the underlying property may be exempt from the provisions of the Act, but where the advertisement itself violates the Act. See 42 U.S.C. 3603 (b).
Publishers and advertisers are responsible under the Act for making, printing, or publishing an advertisement that violates the Act on its face. Thus, they should not publish or cause to be published an advertisement that on its face expresses a preference, limitation or discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin. To the extent that either the Advertising Guidelines or the case law do not state that particular terms or phrases (or closely comparable terms) may violate the Act, a publisher is not liable under the Act for advertisements which, in the context of the usage in a particular advertisement, might indicate a preference, limitation or discrimination, but where such a preference is not readily apparent to an ordinary reader. Therefore, complaints will not be accepted against publishers concerning advertisements where the language might or might not be viewed as being used in a discriminatory context.
As far as roommates....
For example, Intake staff should not accept a complaint against a newspaper for running an advertisement which includes the phrase female roommate wanted because the advertisement does not indicate whether the requirements for the shared living exception have been met. Publishers can rely on the representations of the individual placing the ad that shared living arrangements apply to the property in question. Persons placing such advertisements, however, are responsible for satisfying the conditions for the exemption. Thus, an ad for a female roommate could result in liability for the person placing the ad if the housing being advertised is actually a separate dwelling unit without shared living spaces. See 24 CFR 109.20.
See http://www.netopia.eu/weblining-why-eating-at-nandos-could-c...
(Also, as we're going through an $ideology-scare, a disclaimer: I'm not criticizing the ultimate goal of anti-discrimination housing laws, nor even HUD for going after Faceboot here - but really pointing out the utterly predictable no-win situation these centralizing companies have created for themselves)
Reminiscent of IBM's history.
Personally I think the law is bullshit: what is interesting, and what we want to prevent, isn't landlords who can target only some group, but landlords who _do_.
But I guess facebook makes for an interesting target.
> what we want to prevent, isn't landlords who can target only some group, but landlords who _do_.
Sort of. Landlords will always, intentionally or unintentionally, target one group or the other, simply because they can't advertise literally everywhere. The important things are that the contents of the ads aren't discriminatory against protected classes, and they can in theory be seen by anyone who buys the right paper or sees the handbill or billboard or TV ad. FB's targeting appears to remove the possibility of equality of opportunity to view the ads. There's never a reason to allow filtering by protected classes on housing ads, so FB shouldn't have ever provided it as a feature whether directly or indirectly.
>(c) 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, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.
Like hitman services?
Just because the advertiser can use these tools to discriminate doesn't mean they actually do or mean they aren't 100% personally responsible to comply with the law.
I was kind of under the impression there were checks and balances to prevent these sorts of governmental fishing expeditions...
This isn’t a question of an agency interpretating a law to mean X, it’s right there in the text.
It was written with newspaper classifieds in mind (and probably other things). But it clearly applies.
And, as we all know, nobody wants Facebook to be the Thought Police. Umm, well...most people don't want Facebook to be the Thought Police but that's besides the point.
Now (if HUD's arguments are valid) Facebook needs to determine if a landlord trying to run an efficient ad campaign or is making sure the "wrong kind of people" don't apply to be tenants. Either way the burden of proof is on Facebook since they are directly accountable for the thought processes of a third party simply by giving them the ability to discriminate against prospective tenants while (one would hope) not intending to discriminate against anyone themselves.
So, yes, I'm sticking by my original opinion that it isn't Facebook's responsibility to do HUD's job of rooting out the bad actors.
So, Facebook should be free to profit from taking and selling, displaying those ads, without restriction? After all, they're not the ones doing anything illegal, right?
1) People are going to discriminate, even if it’s illegal. Heck, I was at a restaurant and an Israeli couple were smugly grinning about how they were discriminating against a candidate whom was “male and too old” by wasting his time and not calling them back. It sucks, but you can’t legislate not being an asshat, even with ostensibly anti-asshat laws.
https://www.craigslist.org/about/FHA
>Federal Fair Housing laws prohibit discriminatory advertising in all housing, regardless of how large or small the property. However, as discussed below, advertising which expresses a preference based upon sex is allowed in shared living situations where tenants will share a bathroom, kitchen, or other common area.
>Shared Housing Exemption -- If you are advertising a shared housing unit, in which tenants will be sharing a bathroom, kitchen, or other common area, you may express a preference based upon sex only.
I HAVE seen Craigslist take down apartment ads that list religious preferences.
Practically any criterion X you might use to restrict an ad's audience will have non-uniform correlations with group demographics. You can't wish away these correlations: they're true facts about the world. These non-uniform correlations allow activists to argue that allowing advertisers to target based on X is therefore prohibited discrimination. They can repeat this process for all X.
Now, you might argue that ad targeting is bad. That's a common position on HN. But it's not true: ad targeting is good for advertisers, since it enables more efficient advertising, and it's good for users, since it subjects them to less noise and exposes them to ads more likely to be relevant to them. Ad targeting also undergirds practically the entire tech economy. That probably means you, reader of this comment.
Where exactly should restrictions on ad targeting stop?
EDIT: For clarity:
Step 1: HUD files a complaint against Facebook for allowing ad targeting based on certain criteria.
Step 2: Facebook bans advertising targeting based on the criteria in the HUD complaint.
Step 3: Advertisers react by targeting based on demographic correlates of the categories from step #1.
Step 4: HUD notices that ads are still getting delivered more to one group than another.
GOTO STEP #1.
There's no clear point at which this process stops. Demographic correlates are numerous and strong. Are you going to ban all of them? That's tantamount to banning ad targeting generally!
> Where exactly does it stop?
It stops in cases when it's not protected and not breaking the law. Housing and job adverts cannot be explicitly descriminatory. It's a clear existing law. There is a clear line. You have to do your best and take precautions to avoid descrimination. When a platform doesn't do that then there's a problem.
Since we're discussing the scenarios that the law might cover, your claim seems rather circular.
> It's a clear existing law. There is a clear line.
The entire point of my post is that the line isn't neat and clear at all. Very similar concerns come up in various other contexts, and we as a society are going to have to deal with the internal contradictions of current orthodox thinking one way or another, and probably soon.
Your comment is just asserting that the problem I described doesn't exist. It does. Wishing away reality doesn't make it disappear.
User targeted ads do not produce better ads, despite everyone selling ads saying so.
Ad targeting works. That's a fact. You can argue that we should kill ad targeting anyway, that's fine. You can make that case, and I'd disagree. But to flatly deny that ad targeting works? That's adopting a private set of alternative facts, and if you do that, we can't have a conversation.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I've banned this account until we get some indication that you want to use HN as intended, and will from now on.
Why should we ignore it? It sounds like Facebook allows you to use those exact things to target your ad. Thus the problem.
Absolutely nobody is arguing that Facebook isn't liable in such a case because it's clearly spelled out in the letter of the law.
Yes it’s blatant discrimination, and that’s exactly the problem.
The ability to say “don’t show to fans of Soulja Boy“ could certainly be a big problem, and I’m sure they might look into that too, but the first one is still there.
I also once bought soap that was advertised to me on Facebook. It's my go to brand of soap now.
I also read here on HN someone successfully using Facebook ads to target people planning on moving in their city to find an apartment before it reached the open market. EDIT: here it is, https://medium.com/good-signals/apartment-baiting-with-faceb...
If you're excluded from being targeted by an FB ad you have no chance of seeing it. If that exclusion criteria forms the basis of a protected class and the ad in question relates to housing, that's illegal. So it's a very narrow set of behaviors that are wrong here, not all of ad targeting.
E.g. it's probably not illegal (or even morally wrong) to exclude someone who is interested in topics such as "Hinduism" from ads for beef jerky. Even though religion is a protected class, beef jerky isn't housing.
Similarly, it's (probably) not wrong to exclude low-income people from ads for your high-end condo because AFAIK income isn't a protected class.
You are asserting a slippery-slope argument, but this is a situation where there are clear places this doesn't lead. It may be fuzzy instead of a clear line, but there's not actually a slippery slope necessarily. And you need to bear burden to show that there is a slippery slope.
What logical basis is there for stopping at zip code targeting and not applying the same logic to other demographic correlates?
Except there are 40 years of court decisions clarifying how the law should be interpreted.
Step 1: HUD files a complaint against Facebook for allowing ad targeting based on certain criteria.
Step 2: Facebook bans advertising targeting based on the criteria in the HUD complaint.
Step 3: Advertisers react by targeting based on demographic correlates of the categories from step #1.
Step 4: HUD notices that ads are still getting delivered more to one group than another.
GOTO STEP #1.
There's no clear point at which this process stops. Demographic correlates are numerous and strong. Are you going to ban all of them? That's tantamount to banning ad targeting generally!
FYI these are the specific points they are going after:
-display housing ads either only to men or women;
-not show ads to Facebook users interested in an "assistance dog," "mobility scooter," "accessibility" or "deaf culture";
-not show ads to users whom Facebook categorizes as interested in "child care" or "parenting," or show ads only to users with children above a specified age;
-to display/not display ads to users whom Facebook categorizes as interested in a particular place of worship, religion or tenet, such as the "Christian Church," "Sikhism," "Hinduism," or the "Bible."
-not show ads to users whom Facebook categorizes as interested in "Latin America," "Canada," "Southeast Asia," "China," "Honduras," or "Somalia."
-draw a red line around zip codes and then not display ads to Facebook users who live in specific zip codes.
Pretty damn clear: gender, race, disability and religion.
Should?? Like how things ought to be with the world? Facebook shouldn't even know who prefers organic food. There should be nothing tying that preference to any other aspect of people's lives. Facebook should be more like Reddit where people can have whatever accounts they want and can interact on organic food topics without identifying themselves or tying that preference to other interests. Or maybe Facebook should have an explicit opt-in for users to choose what they're okay with being used for ads… … should? everyone should use an adblocker and block Facebook's ads. Also, Facebook should offer a service where you can choose to portray yourself as whatever mix of qualities you want to set for each time you search for something. So anyone should be able to see what the algorithm delivers for a set of characteristics they can adjust at will…
Also, I should stop procrastinating on HN
I have to disagree with you on that. I'd put money on targeting a housing advertisement toward someone with a preference for organic food to be ruled discriminatory within five years. It's an unavoidable logical consequence of the logic driving today's complaint.
If there's an organic restaurant or grocer in a neighborhood, it makes sense to market to those who prefer organic food. There's nothing stopping anyone of any race or background from preferring organic food other than price or education/awareness etc.
Short of laws that ban targeted advertising in general, there will never be a law saying that you can't target people with some consumer preference.
If you tried to avoid black folks by not showing an ad to people who like stereotypical black consumer products, you'd be more likely to get away with it. There would be some burden of proof that you were doing this as a proxy for the protected class.
The core point is that our laws are more likely to have effective loopholes that undermine the actual intention than to have slippery slopes that take the intention and go way too far with it.
The law already exists if that will happen as you say, it will happen no matter what FB does.
So why should FB get to ignore the law unlike thousands of other businesses? Why do they get an exception?
It's easy in current ad targeting setups to limit an ad to running on particular sites or to prohibit an ad from running on certain sites.
If someone were to run an ad and configure the campaign such that it appeared on the Wall Street Journal website and not the Teen Vogue website, would this action have any different moral or legal character from deciding to run a print at in the Wall Street Journal instead of Teen Vogue?
Why or why not?
That said, it's possible that a forward-thinking court has already resolved the question under discussion. Can you point me to case law that discusses the boundary between discriminatory and non-discriminatory ad targeting based on demographic correlates?
I meant my comment to refer to the idea of a slippery slope on what does/does not count as a discriminatory. There is lots of case law on that.
I think it’s safe to say if a court has previous rules you can’t put ‘No X’ or ‘Y only’ in a newspaper ads you can use t as a filter for ad targeting.
Yes: "the vast majority of families (73%) who buy organic describe themselves as white" [1]
Now, you might say, "Okay then. Let's prohibit ad targeting by food preference." But the trouble is that there are hundreds of factors that correlate with protected group membership. Are you going to ban them all?
[1] https://www.foodnavigator-usa.com/Article/2015/04/03/Who-buy...
It's a tough question to answer. I believe you were debating me about the use of ZIP code as a proxy in another comment thread so I'll touch on that also.
If it's found that organic food preference is systemically being used as a proxy for a protected class, as ZIP code has been in the past, then it might end up being banned. By following this process could you end up with a list of hundreds of banned factors? In theory yes, but in practice it seems unlikely, just because of how long it would take to study each factor and go through the process of adding it to a banned list. It took a long time for redlining to be made illegal. The article you provided says that organic food preference is gradually starting to mirror the general population, so if current trends continue it eventually won't be useful as a signal for race-based discrimination. Furthermore unlike redlining, there's no vicious circle of "I eat non-organic food -> I can't get a loan to buy organic food -> I have to continue eating non-organic food". By the time you had enough data to decide whether discrimination based on a particular factor constitutes de facto discrimination against a protected class, that correlation might have ceased to exist.
Your comment essentially restates the HUD's complaint. It doesn't engage with my discussion of the fundamental incompatibility of the HUD's regulatory regime and ad targeting in general. Nobody was ever convinced of anything by someone typing "FYI: [restatement of original premise]".
Creating an imaginary general problem as a way of attacking the specific issue is disingenuous.
My original point (which has now been downvoted into oblivion, presumably because it raises uncomfortable questions) is that we as an industry need to ask the question "What next?". We know that these regulations will not in fact stop housing discrimination and that more will follow.
It's disappointing that we're unable to have a frank discussion of this subject, since it's important both legally and economically. All the responses in this thread have essentially been that we shouldn't ask "What next?" because the "next" part hasn't happened yet. That's just ostrich-in-sand thinking.
We don’t know that. I imagine if that was true it would have been proved clearly in the last 40 years. But the law still exists. I’ve not aware of attempts to repeal it.
> and that more will follow.
Again, we’ve had 40 years for this.
So many people in this thread arguing against HUD seem to be trying to argue like this law is something new, like a soda tax, that has very little history or case law. Where the best we can do is hypotheticals. That’s not the case.
> It's disappointing that we're unable to have a frank discussion of this subject
I find it scary that we’re having a discussion. As I see it the story is ‘FB refuses to comply with 40 year old law’, and there are a lot of people arguing they don’t like the idea behind the law so why should they?
Because it’s a 40 year old law. It’s been to the Supreme Court at least once (2015). You don’t get to choose to ignore it because you don’t like it and then get mad when the government tried to punish you for it.
> All the responses in this thread have essentially been that we shouldn't ask "What next?" because the "next" part hasn't happened yet
FHA was 1968. So 50 years, not 40. We have 50 years of ‘next’ to look at.
> That's just ostrich-in-sand thinking.
What is ignoring 50 years of impact and acting like we don’t know how the law would be enforced?
Again? My read of this story was purely as a ‘tech giant decides to ignore he law because they can get away with it’ and had nothing to do with the law in question.
I should have expected HN to see it as ‘poor company bullied by law that theoretically may be problematic based on someone’s beliefs’. I’ve been here far long enough. I should have known. But I didn’t. I looked at the thread. Sigh.
I don't think it was possible before today's microtarget-based internet advertising to use demographic correlates to substitute for banned targeting of protected groups. That it's now much more feasible than it's ever been in the past to target protected groups without facially making protected group membership part of the filtering process puts anti-discrimination legislation in a new position. The past 50 years of case law isn't particularly relevant to this new situation: in 1968, it wasn't possible to filter ads based on a suite of seemingly-irrelevant characteristics so as to accurately re-create banned targeting.
There is some precedent (e.g., Griggs) for applying a "disparate impact" standard to anti-discrimination measures. My argument is that this reasoning, if followed rigorously, will essentially prohibit ad targeting altogether, since every meaningful ad targeting criterion will end up targeting different arms of protected groups differently.
I've seen no rebuttal of this point, either from you or from anyone else.
> I find it scary that we’re having a discussion
Now that's a terrifying thought. A discussion!
Legal history would prove you wrong. Racist seem to be willing to spend a very large amount of time trying to come up with ways to not have to live next to/rent to certain groups of people. You didn’t need a Pentium 4 to figure out that far fewer black people went to college in the 70s and requiring a college degree would be a pretty good way of filtering them out of your application process.
"Weapons of Math Destruction" presents good evidence that 90% is much lower than the actual effectiveness of X.
-display housing ads either only to men or women;
-not show ads to Facebook users interested in an "assistance dog," "mobility scooter," "accessibility" or "deaf culture";
-not show ads to users whom Facebook categorizes as interested in "child care" or "parenting," or show ads only to users with children above a specified age;
-to display/not display ads to users whom Facebook categorizes as interested in a particular place of worship, religion or tenet, such as the "Christian Church," "Sikhism," "Hinduism," or the "Bible."
-not show ads to users whom Facebook categorizes as interested in "Latin America," "Canada," "Southeast Asia," "China," "Honduras," or "Somalia."
-draw a red line around zip codes and then not display ads to Facebook users who live in specific zip codes.
It's not like the Facebook Ad Manager has a guided wizard for the real estate industry to target prospective tenants.
For example, if you own a newspaper that caters to people of a specific national origin, are you not allowed to accept any housing ads? By definition, any ad placement on that newspaper is discriminatory in terms of targeting - without knowing the full details of the campaign, they cannot verify that the overall targeting is not discriminatory. This means that any law that makes publishers liable must be restricted to the content of the ads and any law that goes after the demographic targeting likely limits liability to the entity - the advertiser or perhaps agencies - who have full control and knowledge of the targeting in question.
Does this make sense?
If you do something illegal because someone asked you to do it, it's still illegal.
I can believe that being an oversight, but holy Shit those optics... yikes
I guess it's a little more murky when it comes to housing, but how many people in downtown Watts are going to be legitimate potential leads to rent a house in Beverly Hills? I'm not sure that advertisers should be forced to pay for ads to be shown to people that cannot afford or would otherwise not be interested in what they are trying to sell.
It says "such as"; I'm interested if this list includes "synagogue" or "Torah". Is there any place the entire list is included?
"colanders", "pirates", "meatballs": the Pastafarians are just as much a protected class as Catholics, Jains and Druze.
As a gay person, I see this all over the web. Smiling happy gay people buying cars or real estate or whatever. I imagine that behind each of these ads straight people have been de-selected for seeing this ad. But that doesn't mean these advertisers hate straight people or would deny a straight customer. It just means that for that specific ad and creative they were targeting gay people.
https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-lets-advertisers...
https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-advertising-disc...
> draw a red line around zip codes and then not display ads to Facebook users who live in specific zip codes.
This alone is really damn damning. I'm going to go out on a limb and say their counsel is really young and didn't know this was a problem. There is a lot of history in that sentence alone.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Housing_Act
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964
By law you cannot discriminate by any designation of protected class, which includes not only parties to a business transaction but also messaging and opportunities there upon.
I do understand why Facebook would allow ad display filtering by race and other demographic categorizations since they are a media organization who sells advertising. Whether or not that practice is morally qualified or agreeable it makes sense from a business perspective (oh how I do detest advertising).
What I don't get is why Facebook would allow ad suppliers the option to set values to these filters. Facebook has the data to make optimal demographic determinations for a geographically centered business market. Perhaps this indicates that either Facebook isn't very good at that or that ad supplies prefer to perform their own independent research out of distrust or lack of availability from Facebook.
Anyway, this does look like a valid complaint. I wouldn't just sue Facebook though. I would also seek for discovery of the ad suppliers and sue them as well. Facebook is just the proxy here. Somebody is making a deliberate determination to racial profile in violation of the spirit of the law.
---
EDIT. See the third bullet point here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1968#Types...
Why is everyone trying so hard to turn facebook (and google, twitter, etc...) into a filter on everything we say?
When facebook gets held responsible for all content in all jurisdiction it will err on the side of proscription. It was only about 10 years ago that many now acceptable (mandatory even) progressive positions were not in favor.
It won't be another day or two before there is another article bemoaning google acquiescing to China. Pick one. I'll take the one that is open, the crazies broadcast their fake news and we have the occasional illegal ad.
By the way, if these ads are illegal and conducted through facebook, how easy is it for the FHA to look up who is responsible and go after them. Their whole job is done for them. Going after Facebook is sensational and feels good I guess.
It looks like this is to ensure advertisement reaches all protected categories. Can this mean that one would be forced to advertise in magazines that cater to different audiences? To guarantee a certain subset of the population is covered?
Thinking of facebook like traditional media doesn't really work. If we allow people to choose where they're advertising, by definition they're targeting. It'd be like randomly buying ads in magazines and papers.
At the end of the day, it seems more like landlords intent for targeting is more important than anything and that is where the fault lies.
If you had a building in an area that catered to people speaking a minority language (5%) of the population; can you target speakers of that language or do you have to spend 20x?
Edit: grammatical mistakes
The idea that we should operate without discrimination is a toothless platitude with little bearing on reality. It is not Facebooks responsibility to change reality because they are able to accurately quantify and qualify it's existence, and sell ads based on their findings.
Facebook ad audience filtering -- is a very different tool.
This case isn’t “no one can discriminate with ads”. It’s “no one can discriminate ILLEGALY with THIS TYPE of ad”.
Yes, but not on race, gender, income, sexual orientation, etc.
Even residential real estate has to follow a bunch of codes though, like secure railings on all stairways for starters.
Emphasis mine.
If the FHA does indeed prohibit online advertisement discriminating on those criteria, this sounds pretty damning to Facebook. Those are some of the key features of Facebook ads.
https://www.facebook.com/business/success/quadrant-homes
It basically is showing that Facebook knowingly implemented a system to discriminate against people. Even the stock photos are full of white people.
Here's hoping HUD makes a big example out of them and fines them to the fullest extent of the law.
I generally agree that FB should not be allowed to permit users to segment these types of advertisements by the dimensions claimed. However, what piques my curiosity here is whether “indirect” discrimination in choice of advertising medium constitutes discriminatory practice.
For instance, what if some of these advertisers, instead of segmenting directly by race to target whites only, targeted fans of pages that were obviously but not specifically comprised of whites (e.g., “Irish American Heritage” or “Blonde Hair Tips”). Would there be a case to be made for discrimination? And against whom?
>effectively limit housing options for these protected classes
I have head of zip code being protected or personally identifiable information but never a protected class
Also fun fact, "age" as a protected class in the US only refers to discrimination against people over the age of 40.
In employment law, not housing law.
"the systematic denial of various services to residents of specific, often racially associated, neighborhoods or communities"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Housing_Council_of_San_Fe...
Worth reading the case to understand what FB is up against here.
a) A token fine
b) A fine large enough that it sees investors taking action against the management
c) A fine that is an existential threat to Facebook
d) Jail time for executives
e) Forced closure
I just wonder if anyone can suggest how serious this could be if they are found to be I the wrong?
You can also conduct illegal activity via Facebook messenger of groups, does that make it Facebook's fault?
See e.g. a similar case brought against the New York Times in the 80s, and the resulting investment by the Times in a reviewing process where humans went through submitted ads looking for discrimination.
I guess what I'm thinking is, if Facebook had a feature (maybe it does, I'm not a user) allowing members to search housing classifieds, and if that feature allowed listing agents to discriminate against who saw their listings in results, that would be straight up bullshit. But, AFAIK, anyone can anonymously search different housing listing platforms for available housing wherever they want to live, so I guess I'm just struggling to see how housing advertising is worth this sort of scrutiny at all.
Again, I stress that discrimination is fucked and I'm happy to see something being done about it on any level, at all. I just feel like there are surely bigger fish to fry and spending resources on pursuing to whom/how ads are delivered doesn't seem like the best investment.
In the end they're going to have to either stop allowing housing ads or remove any filtering for those ads that relate to a protected class (including any fine grained geographic filters too probably because those turn into a racial proxy pretty quickly) and anything that's a significant proxy for something like race.
It's as if they don't understand how widespread racism, discrimination and segregation was, how it was systematically enforced, how it occurred and continues to occur and why these measures remain important.
Given this affected parties must continue the fight because that's the only way to confront selective memories, denial and ignorance.
If the laws still do not deter then increase the penalty until they’re adhered to. Such that it will leave no such question as to whose responsibility it is.
If we do not want such laws then repeal them.
Only the rule of law will prevail here.
Simply know the rules, or pay the penalty.
1) Create an ad targeting straight couples, and hide it from gay couples. 2) Create an ad targeting gay couples, and hide it from straight couples.
If you query for "is anyone running an ad hidden from gay couples", this would return "yes".
However, my hunch (hope?) is that the prosecution was clever enough to account for this, and are specifically finding ad campaigns which are "unbalanced" (eg; there is no ad targeting group X).
> _not_ to show ads to "undesireable" people, like people with kids, or of a certain religion
What if I have a bar in Vegas almost exclusively frequented by young people in their twenties who go their to get drunk and meet singles. Why would I want to waste money showing an ad to people with kids who will not be interested and bring way less conversions than people with no kids in their twenties? What if I open a delicatessen shop that makes most of its business on porc meat and liquor, would I get a lot of conversions by paying to show such an ad to Muslims or would I be wasting money? What you want is advertisers to show their ads to people who are not interested and lose their money. That doesn't seem fair to me. People of different family situation (kids or no kids) or religions don't always share the same interests and that's ok.
If landlord does not want to rent out to people with kids - I (as a parent with kids) do NOT want to see that ad.
How forcing landlord to advertise to categories they do not want to serve -- would help to anybody?
https://www.thebalance.com/fair-housing-act-violation-179889...
You want to target only a specific group that, under the law, can't be targeted/avoided? Fine, but then you have to create at least 3 segments on this ad to target at least 3 different groups, to prove that you are not discriminating.
A segment would be a version of the ad (design, copy, etc) + targeted group.
edit: my point here is that it should be Facebook's responsibility to make it difficult for publisher to post illegal ads, not the other way around.
Good lord. Does that mean that so many advertisers track your activities so thoroughly that they figured out you're gay?
Not saying that it's not creepy, just that with the way we use the internet these days, it's not an epic feat for an advertiser to figure this out given the amount of data we put out there.
There was a thing a few years back where Target was able to determine if someone was pregnant based on their purchasing habits [0].
Facebook, Google and others gather and track orders of magnitude more information than Target could ever dream of can certainly figure out if you are gay, straight, and anything else.
0: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits....
And that’s not even necessarily a bad thing. People and cultures change and so should our regulation and laws.
...what? Are you suggesting it's a good thing that we bring back red lining and other discriminatory practices?
I guess "move fast and break things" applies both to code and the law.
This is actually somewhat odd in this context. Obviously if you're advertising housing in Boston you don't want to be advertising it to people in Washington or China, or probably even Springfield. So you need some way to specify a set of regions and zip code is the obvious way of doing that.
This isn't about makeup, or placing ads in a targeted magazine like Ebony. It's about real estate and housing, and the laws governing that kind of advertising are well-established and very clear.
I worked briefly in large multi-unit housing, and got some of the training related to this sort of thing (though not specifically to advertising).
We were taught that if you're showing an apartment building to someone, you can't ask their age. You can't ask if they have children. You can't ask if they're pregnant.
You can't even do seemingly innocent things like ask a woman who is pregnant or visiting with children if she'd prefer a unit near the playground. Or suggest a ground-floor unit to a person in a wheelchair, even if the building doesn't have an elevator.
Maybe it was just this company's lawyer's overreactions to the law, or perhaps the company had previous bad experiences in this area. But we were given dozens of similar scenarios and those who answered even one incorrectly had to go through enhanced training.
Yes it makes sense in other contexts, but it should never have been allowed here.
I’m surprised it took this long for them to be sued. Just like job notices they’ve been allowing blatantly illegal ads for a LONG time.
In one example the discrimination is deliberately performed by an ad supplier. In the other example the discrimination is performed by the audience of the offline publication. I come to this conclusion because it is the audience that is choosing which demographically targeted publications to purchase or read. People cannot legally discriminate against themselves.
That distinction is also a paradox for Facebook. You cannot be a supplier to everybody and simultaneously to a targeted individual as chosen by individual's inputs. Facebook tries to have both sides of a coin by allowing users maximum flexibility in content preferences and also provide that power to ad suppliers to use for precision targeting.
That's not the issue. The issue is the application of demographics filters. While most publications have a self-selecting audience, the publications themselves do not apply those kind of filters, especially with regard to showing advertising content to a subset of readers.
According to Code of Federal Regulations 109, for example, your hypothetical would indeed be discriminatory (https://www.hud.gov/sites/documents/DOC_7781.PDF, search for "Selective use of advertising media or content")
Quoting the relevant section:
> The following are examples of the selective use of advertisements which may be discriminatory:
> (a) Selective geographic advertisements. Such selective use may involve the strategic placement of billboards; brochure advertisements distributed within a limited geographic area by hand or in the mail; advertising in particular geographic coverage editions of major metropolitan newspapers or in newspapers of limited circulation which are mainly advertising vehicles for reaching a particular segment of the community; or displays or announcements available only in selected sales offices.
(The rest refer to selective use of the "equal opportunity" slogan and logo, and to selective choice of human models to e.g. exclude children in housing ads.)
I would say, using targeted publications 'in addition' is not an issue, but using them as the 'main avenue' is an issue.
If Facebook, Google, et. al want to run advertising companies they have to properly conduct themselves in the current regulatory environment, if their competitive advantage really just boils down to the fact that they are ignoring the rules then there should be a market correction based on them being subject to actual enforcement.
(This is separate from how anyone feels about the actual rules, I think it is reasonable to say that everyone should agree that if there are rules they should be universally applied.)
If you do however put that onus on the platforms, then it's entirely predictable that platforms will cut ties with small businesses. This is more or less what happened with GDPR - lots of small ad-tech players became large liabilities for others in the value chain, leading to more consolidation in the industry. Outside of technology, it's common for certain types of services or tools not to be made aware to small-time customers. The technology industry at large and the large tech companies in particular have so far bucked this trend in a way that created a huge amount of value for the world at large, but this doesn't have to be this way.
I highly doubt that the majority of advertising business for Facebook and Google comes solely from discriminatory housing ads.
What happens if the rules are bad rules? E.g. if it's illegal for Facebook to allow advertisements for marijuana dispensaries on a federal level? Clearly that's not something we'd want to see universally applied.
you wouldn't believe how much time, effort, institutional knowledge, and expertise we applied to regulatory auditing, reporting requirements, and fraud detection per federal guidelines.
we were less than 80 employees total.
hardly a burden for the likes of google.
if (ad target == anything to do with housing) {disable options to exclude ethnic affinity [and a bunch of other things]}
There's two pieces to this a) Facebook makes this possible and b) Facebook damns themselves and promotes that they make this possible for housing. Part b is easy to fix: make it harder to do housing ads that are targeted. However, part a is much harder: what stops me from advertising my AirBnb listing as a URL on Facebook as a "generic ad"?
What this does is increasing the cost of serving small customers, while having negligible impact on the cost of serving large customers. This likely means companies like Google and Facebook will stop serving small businesses that cannot guarantee a certain budget. In a way, we live in a fairly rare time in that a small startup has access to AWS, Azure, GCP, FB ad manager and Google adwords, getting access to most of the same functionalities afforded to larger companies, while operating on tiny budgets without needing account management. This isn't true of many other industries or even services within the same industries. As is, I don't think small businesses are particularly profitable segments for these companies.
This is exactly what already happened with Youtube demonetization - the increased scrutiny on content safety and importance of having human content auditors made monetizing large groups of small-time publishers on Youtube entirely uneconomical for Google. So they got the boot. So in a sense, we should conclude the exact opposite here - automation is what allows a level-playing field for small players and if you take it away through putting a huge amount of pressure on platforms to police behavior of individual customers, it will accelerate consolidation in other industries.
In this case, just like Facebook.
Your responsibility, handed to you with the license, is to not do illegal things, even if people want to pay you money to do it. It's especially bad if you build an automated system that has options for people to do illegal things, since you are in charge of that. The FCC may or may not go after the people who bought the illegal-thing-service from you, but they will definitely go after you.
And the correct solution is to not have the options open in the first place. "Would you like to place an ad? Is it for real estate or housing in any way? OK, the following advertising options are open to you, but others have been turned off in order to comply with the law."
This extends to many areas. Gun manufacturers aren't liable when someone goes on a shooting spree with a gun, for example.
I feel like this is a slippery slope. Facebook lets anyone advertise anything, and gives everyone the same targeting tools. If you use them illegally, that should be on you, not on Facebook. Just like how you can use a screwdriver to screw in screws, or to go around stabbing people with it. The difference is that screwdrivers are a well-understood tool, whereas ad targeting tools are new and scary.
If you want to make advertising illegal, I'm fine with that, but good luck.
If someone asks Facebook to publish an illegal ad, Facebook should not do it.
This is not a free speech issue, or a political speech issue. Nobody is censoring progressive or conservative positions in this case. It's an issue of legality in real estate advertising under a framework of laws that were written decades ago.
Maybe we should acknowledge it is impossible to make a global, legal, Facebook-like website.
No. Going after Facebook is the only effective way to combat these kinds of illegal ads that occur on its platform. If you get it to comply, then the problem's solved at the source. If you follow your recommendation, HUD wastes its resources continually chasing after small fish, and the problem is never truly solved.
In Facebook’s case they not only did that but marketed their death threat service and touted it as highly effective.
That’s a much better metaphor.
Exactly. You are the control operator.
It's not a very good metaphor, because no radio station simply publishes user-contributed content.
There's no way they can be liable because they can't know if the ads are illegal or not. The legality of a given ad depends on many factors not always present in the ad itself -- such as whether the landlord lives in one of the units. All of the above selection criteria are perfectly OK to filter by if a landlord occupies a unit in a building with less than 4 units.
This is why it's legal to advertise for particular genders in a shared apartment scenario. It's also legal to advertise for other criteria like race in these cases -- though it's not socially acceptable.
It's impossible for Facebook to know whether a given ad is legal because of these hidden criteria.
That may be ethical and legal if it's a nightclub or a retail product, but it's not allowed for housing. At a certain scale like Facebook, it should be incumbent on them to disable those ad filters for the ad buyers.
Because they are not utility companies and have taken upon themselves to filter results so they gave up safe harbour.
>(c) 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, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.
How is Facebook the FCC and not the broadcaster in this metaphor?
You say that like there is a clear, deterministic way to audit how Facebook ads are being targeted? I do not think you understand how ad trafficking on Facebook works.
How would the FHA determine that an ad was only being served to white people? Say you see and ad being served and you want to check if it is also being served to a black facebook user. You create a burner account. But now your Facebook feed isn't showing that ad anymore. Is it because of targeting, or is it because Facebook has other ad inventory that they want to show you? What if the inventory of the ad has been exhausted? I could be wrong, but it seems literally impossible to audit Facebook ads without access to Facebook's internals.
This is a specific law targeting specific advertisements. For many other kinds of advertising, facebook is still free from liability. The reason housing advertisements get special treatment is that housing is both a neccesity, and housing trends have a very strong effect on society.
Nothing is preventing an atheist from reading a Christian magazine, or some non-expected audience member from reading an ad targeted at a general audience. The problem is when you control the viewers on an individual level, as Facebook does.
Landlord ads are more or less like job ads, in that sense.
If I understand correctly, your argument is that optimizing cost goes against making fairness for all its citizens. So, it is a matter of priority. What is more important "fairness and justice" or "cost reduction"?
With FB, you could target an ad to people who go to that school who are of certain race. (https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/609543/faceboo...)
This is specifically not allowed by the Fair Housing Act.
>(c) 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, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.
If people actually did place housing discrimination ads they'd also be in violation of the law.
(In general, laws are usually written in a way to prevent profiting off of illegal behavior)
The main reason why racial preferences are not allowed to get published -- is because it reinforces public bias toward specific race. But if ads are simply not shown to some group -- what is the problem with that?
I'd argue both are responsible - the platform hosting the ad and the people making the ad.
How is it different from hardware store that sell knives that can be used to cut vegetables or people, at the discretion of the buyer?
Maybe a better way to deal with that is a different regulation. Mandate the industry designation in the ad and if it is something protected by existing laws, like housing or job ads, remove filters that allow for adding or removing by protected category from the interface.
There is a law on the books prohibiting publishers from publishing descriminitory ads, even if they didn't write them.
That's the difference.
However, we do have laws about sales of guns, chemical weapons precursors, nuclear fuel, aircraft, etc.
Practically speaking, which one sounds better: "HUD files discrimination complaint against Facebook" or "HUD files discrimination complaint against Jimmy's Duplex-Mania in rural Alabama"?
Wait for it.
> 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, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.
This clearly covers online or any other kind of ad.
> Sec. 804. [42 U.S.C. 3604] Discrimination in sale or rental of housing and other prohibited practices
If this applies even in who the ads is shown to, think about the implications. What if I run an ad in e.g. "Golf Digest Weekly"? Would that be unlawful for that publication to actually publish? What if I place a billboard in a high income area? Is the billboard renter liable? Is my ad unlawful? If I place a for-sale sign in the yard of a vacant house in a high-end neighborhood, is that unlawful as well?
I'd like to think the HUD has thought out their case and it's implications, but I don't see how you can take their interpretation of this law without practically destroying all housing ads - which is clearly not their intent. So I'm very anxious to see how this plays out in court!
A classic example was a case brought against the New York Times for discriminatory housing classified ads.
Now, what's interesting here is that Facebook is involved in the targeting. So, if you only place housing ads in the Chicago Defender, and don't place them in White newspapers, the Defender isn't involved in your discrimination; however, if you place ads in the Defender stating "Black Tenants Only" and the Defender published those, the Defender would probably be liable. And if you pay an advertising firm and tell them to only place your ad in "Black" newspapers then that firm that did the targeting would be liable.
(Although in terms of enforcement priorities, such discrimination is probably very small-scale and wouldn't be very high up on HUD's or DoJ's list.)
If the small companies in question are gaining competitive advantage through non-compliance that makes them viable enterprises then it is good and correct that they should be forced to change their business model and compete with the same rules as everyone else, right?
I don't understand what you are saying with this: "Outside of technology, it's common for certain types of services or tools not to be made aware to small-time customers. The technology industry at large and the large tech companies in particular have so far bucked this trend in a way that created a huge amount of value for the world at large.."
No.
Family status is protected in housing law, so no, a landlord can't refuse to rent to someone because they have young children.
Exceptions apply for certain senior living communities, but they are 55+, not 40+.
Are the adds structured to exclude certain groups from certain properties: Problem
Are the adds structured to engage each group as much as possible: No problem.
There might be some grey area where you decide not to market certain properties to certain groups, because you think they aren't interested rather then because you don't want them.
Only if they can demonstrate that their religious beliefs are sincere. There have been some court cases along these lines already.
At this point people just seem to make the assumption that people like donald trump are just lying about their faith as if it's a completely normal thing to assert about someone.
https://www.sundaypost.com/news/uk-news/school-places-withdr...
For purposes of going to secondary school, I was raised Catholic. Slightly more completed my case as although my dad was an atheist, my mum thought she was taking it seriously (given how many New Age books and Hindu icons and statues she had, I don’t count her as a proper Catholic).
1) https://www.justice.gov/usao/about-offices-united-states-att...
No slippery slope. This shit is illegal and has been for decades . Just because it happens on the internet doesn't make it any less illegal.
Facebook allows you to exclude housing ads from being shown to protected classes of people. Facebook effectively says "Do you want to hide this ad from disabled people?" All they have to do to comply with anti-discrimination laws is to not offer this kind of exclusion.
It's illegal, that's the problem.
You could argue whole foods prices do prevent vast majority of ppl from going to whole foods.
If you asked a real estate agent could they find you a house in a mostly Jewish community for instance, they are not allowed to help you...
https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/articles/what-your...
Real estate agents can easily find themselves having to explain why they can’t narrow down homes on the market based on the client’s preferences because the requests touch on the protected classes. Babs De Lay, broker and owner of Urban Utah Homes and Estates real estate agency in Salt Lake City, says she worked with friends a few years ago who said they were looking for the “most Jewish, democratic neighborhood” in the area.
You could ask your real estate agent, “Is this a good neighborhood?”
Your agent isn't purposely giving you the run-around. Certain details about a neighborhood or community can violate the Fair Housing Act, which was enacted in 1968 to eliminate housing discrimination. The law protects against discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability or family status. In particular, it prohibits any real estate professional from steering prospective homebuyers or renters toward or away from a community based on any of the classes under federal protection.
Yes they are!
The FHA specifically applies to housing ads!
>The legality of a given ad depends on many factors not always present in the ad itself -- such as whether the landlord lives in one of the units. All of the above selection criteria are perfectly OK to filter by if a landlord occupies a unit in a building with less than 4 units.
No, discriminatory ads are illegal (other than sex in a roommate situation) even though discrimination in selection is legal in some cases.
>It's also legal to advertise for other criteria like race in these cases -- though it's not socially acceptable
No, it's not legal.
If you post a housing ad on Craigslist, they tell you all this.
No, they are not.
> The FHA specifically applies to housing ads!
As I explained, the FHA applies to certain /kinds/ of housing ads. The determination of whether the FHA applies at all is dependent on a multitude of factors which an advertising middle-man cannot easily know.
Some advertisers opt to respond by applying broad content bans, but this is not reflective of the underlying law.
You will not develop an accurate understanding of the law by trying to reverse engineer it through reading various corporate policies.
> No, discriminatory ads are illegal (other than sex in a roommate situation) even though discrimination in selection is legal in some cases.
This is flatly incorrect. There is no differentiation whatsoever in the FHA between different types of discrimination. They are all uniformly referenced and exempted. See 42 U.S. Code § 3604 Sec 804.
The exemptions mean the FHA restrictions do not apply at all. Nowhere is gender discrimination carved out differently from any other type.
> No, it's not legal.
Yeah, it is. I don't like it any more than you do, but this is a fact not a preference.
You are making a common error by ascribing common sense and reasonability to the law. Sometimes this can help frame broad tenets but in this particular case it is leading you to a demonstrably false conclusion.
> § 109.25 Selective use of advertising media or content.
> (a) Selective geographic advertisements. Such selective use may involve the strategic placement of billboards; brochure advertisements distributed within a limited geographic area by hand or in the mail; advertising in particular geographic coverage editions of major metropolitan newspapers or in newspapers of limited circulation which are mainly advertising vehicles for reaching a particular segment of the community; or displays or announcements available only in selected sales offices.
If this sounds burdensome, it's supposed to be, changing society and correcting centuries of inequality and discrimination requires significant active effort.
Also remember that intent and reasonable expectations matter. You as an individual with limited means and no legal advice would be held to a different standard than Facebook, a corporation with many orders of magnitude more responsibility.
Finally, remember that law is not code. The Fair Housing Act is a tool to be used judiciously by humans to correct wrongs, not a precise standard that can be applied in the same way to every situation. It's not possible to write a law that anticipates every possible scenario, that's why we write relatively vague laws and involve humans at every step of the process.
1) Is it unlawful for the advertiser to publish advertisements that may result in an individual selectively advertising? There seems to be no law or guidance even suggesting that the answer is yes here. For instance, under your guidance the billboard owner (who then rents it to the advertiser) would not be liable for not ensuring that the advertiser was advertising in a sufficiently broad, or random, variety of locations to fulfill the legal regulations. Facebook in this case is not the person placing the advertisements - but the venue of advertisement.
2) Is it unlawful for a person to advertise without complete demographic representation? This is not what this case is about, though it's an interesting question. The HUD's guidance makes this quite clear though, like you mention, that is guidance from the HUD and not necessarily the law itself. Government agencies tend to take very broad positions on laws, but these interpretations do not always hold up in the courts. It would be interesting to see how this point is argued from both sides, though this is a tangential issue.
This case is quite peculiar though since the HUD release seems to be building a case based on #2, yet targeting a defendant was would be implied from #1. This seems highly inconsistent, so again - it should be very interesting to see how this case develops.
In your example if I was the billboard owner and someone wanted to display an ad that was federally regulated I would absolve my liability by making the customer sign off on the fact that their ad complies with federal law.
Just seems so simple. I guess the money blinded them. Seems the status quo for Facebook.
Added: HUD lists some advertising practices that it prohibits but obviously the smaller the scale and the grayer the intent, the less likely a complaint.
Discrimination, in this regard, only occurs if somebody is made to consume or is denied content on the basis of a protected class status.
I guess I don't see how ad targeting involves force either (it just happens to be effective), but whatever.
And state or regional real estate advertising doesn't work because basically nobody in San Francisco is looking for housing in Los Angeles or vice versa, much less San Francisco and Phoenix.
With people like Bosworth and Zuckerberg at the top and Sandberg as consigliere it's no surprise at all. Tone at the top has a huge effect on internal controls.
This is all so easy to avoid. Maybe you’d get sued when someone claimed you weren’t doing enough but they’re not doing ANYTHING. The lowest possible bar.
So although it seems unclear whether that conditional is met, either way I don't see why we would ban such advertising.
Housing is a neccesity in life. Therefore, discrimination by housing providers is a real problem. Being excluded from parts of the housing market is very different from being excluded from parts of the beauty market. Even more so because housing viable for e.g. white people is equally viable for black people. Whereas the same does not hold for beauty products.
Now, if indeed the other case were to occur (where one ethnicity is not interested in certain housing, and advertising reflects this) that would be less obviously bad. However, like I stated it seems less likely that this would occur. Moreover, this is a very convenient cover for people who do wish to discriminate.
If you'd like to target a specific demographic you can do so using either inclusionary or exclusionary targeting. Only one of those systems also allows you to explicitly exclude one or more groups rather than just target a subset of groups. Your example seems to be a very charitable interpretation of how exclusionary targeting could be used. There's (probably) nothing wrong with it if it's used that way. But you could just as easily use the system you described to prevent a variety of protected demographics from being able to see the advertisement whatsoever.
https://www.ajc.com/visitor_agreement_mobile_old/
Equal Housing Opportunity. Any real estate advertising on this website is subject to the Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal to advertise "any preference limitation or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation or discrimination." Georgia state law also forbids discrimination based on these factors, except that it forbids discrimination based on "disability" rather than "handicap." Familial status includes children under the age of 18 living with parents or legal custodians; pregnant women and people securing custody of children under 18. To complain of discrimination call the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development at 800-669-9777.
Back to your point though, it is a new domain because with your paper examples there is no one who can "undo" the illegal ad. You copy it at Kinko's and it's not like Kinko's is out there delivering it with you. With online platforms, they both Target and deliver these ads and are responsible for continually delivering them.
Example: I worked at a pharmacy with the self-serve digital photo services. A customer brought in a CD and made christmas cards from a family picture.
It turns out the picture was taken by a local photographer the customer had hired. The pharmacy I worked at got the legal notice. Supposedly, we were partly to blame since we profited off of the cards the customer printed. Nevermind the fact that we didn't generally check the customer's pictures, nor could we actually have guessed these were professional vs a good picture.
The customer cropped out the identifying marks. We had all seen pictures that looked professional, both in digital and film form. It seems none of that mattered. It wouldn't be Kinko's fault that you photocopy an illegal ad, but they can be party to the fault by allowing it to be sold.
Now, the USPS probably has completely different laws protecting it. I'm going to guess it is more likely that they try to get you for mail fraud rather than actually hold the USPS responsible.
...Why does a pharmacy print photographies? I've never heard of a pharmacy selling something that isn't drugs.
If you ask USPS to display your illegal ad in their window then it certainly is their fault. That would be an actually comparable situation here.
I can’t imag them fighting this, theyvseem so unlikely to win.
But then again, I’m surprised corporate counsel wasn’t screaming about this. It’s not the first time I’ve read about this and I don’t work there.
That's a consistent position, but it amounts to banning of ad targeting. Is that the world you want?
So I don’t see why any of that should be allowed here.
And it would only apply to things that have a heavy discriminatory effect. I don’t see why it would matter if you chose not to advertise your non-pet friendly apartment complex to people who have pets. Unless someone can show that’s a pretty direct proxy to a protected class it seems fine.
Again, this only applies to kinds of ads covered by this (or similar) laws. Housing and employment are the only two kinds I know of. I see no reason why you should be restricted in who you choose to advertise your new T-shirt to.
Here it is the same thing with Facebook. If they sell you a platform for advertising, they might not be able to control 100% of the content of the ads, some bad stuff might slip. But they should NOT offer you tools to publish illegal ads. In that case, being able to filter ads by race is illegal, and it's on them to offer this option. It would be a different story if there was no option and a publisher just wrote "no people of <race>".
Just to be clear, we're talking about targeted advertising. I don't know how we can fix this issue. Maybe Facebook can ask tell type of an ad something is?
I don’t see why it’s Facebook’s responsibility to police advertising for housing and control how it’s targeted. If advertisers use illegal targeting then that should be on them.
I wonder how this conversation went when they were drawing up this feature.
The wording of the provision they've run afoul of is elsewhere in the thread; it disagrees with you.
My point is more along the lines of Legal needed to be asleep at the wheel to let a team put together a solution where you literally draw a red line around zip codes to exclude them.
In a company where you have people defacing "black lives matter" posters why is it surprising that they know fuck all about black history?
When I wrote the comment I wasn't thinking of retail consumer goods. Strictly in the context of geographic markets my comment was more valid, but in the context of beauty products (as the provided example) it doesn't make any sense.
It’s something of a cultural identity issue in the US. Mocking religious beliefs in the abstract is often acceptable, but mocking specific people is far less so.
So, yes, it does apply in US as well - you have freedom of religion, but it has to be an "actual religion", whatever that means. Things might have been different if the Constitution just spoke of freedom of consciousness or some such; but we have what we have.
This, by the way, is one of the reason why the Satanic Temple has been a lot more successful with its lawsuits so far (e.g. https://religiousreproductiverights.com/lawsuit-status/lawsu... - but also numerous cases where a mere threat of a lawsuit causes the local government to change its tune) - because it tries to present itself in a way that makes it clear that trolling isn't the only thing it is about.
Really, Cavanaugh's seeking 5 million and an exemption from various prison rules put the issue in different light than officiating marriages.
Which is why the generalizing rulings is tricky and you need to keep jurisdiction in mind.
You ask the user to say what type of ad it is, under penalty of violation of contract, and contractually obligate them to carry the legal risk if they lie.
There's no requirement that it be done via some fancy ML algorithm. I would expect that unless FB actively attempts to piss off the government, that would pass legal muster. Goodness knows I've signed enough agreements where I've agreed to very similar clauses just in normal day-to-day life.
Then again, I'm just a random internet person. If you're a lawyer, or if you can provide chapter and verse, I'll shut up.
The government is under no obligation to look at the terms of a civil contract when they decide who to prosecute.
The same way that newspapers, television stations, radio stations, magazines, and advertising agencies have for the last 200 or so years.
And they didn't have super-duper AI, the smartest people on the continent, and warehouses full of servers to help.
By not permitting Airbnb URLs as generic ads.
Edit to ad: and placing a warning if it looks like it might be a housing ad: “this looks like a housing related ad and has been flagged for moderation”
By doing it.
Facebook loves to try to play both sides, and claim to paying customers that it absolutely has the ability to do a thing, while turning round and saying to regulators that it is only a poor helpless social-media network utterly lacking in the ability to do such things.
If even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the capabilities Facebook claims in its materials for advertisers are genuine, it can figure out which ads are housing ads.
Getting Facebook to disable some targeting option seems like a much easier route than going after each ad buyer. Targeting the publisher makes sense because they are in the best position to enforce policies on their platform and stop the descriminatory practice at a larger scale.
As a user of Facebook, this method of discrimination is markedly different than physically showing up to a house for rent and the home owner taking one look at you, scrunching up their face, and saying it's no longer available, tipping you off that what they are doing is illegal.
In the context of housing ads (or employment) these tools DO NOT have legal uses.
Thus they are illegal.
Targeting specific demographic using protected categories in other areas can be legal too.
As a pharmaceutical company you can target women, men, seniors for targeted medications. As a LGBTQ dating site you can target based on sexual orientation and cis/trans. It is not illegal. Housing and jobs (maybe something else) are covered by specific legislation.
The analogous argument for knives would be "In the context of torture knives don't have any legal uses. (So knife sellers need to put safe guards in preventing their knives from torturing people)".
I'm trying not to say anything too mean, so I'll just say this: learn some history.
At the very least Facebook could provide section-specific filter, if they haven’t already.
I think that if corporation wants to engage in a form of civil disobedience then that act should be recognized and treated by the authorities appropriately, not treated like it is not happening in the first place. The point of an act of civil disobedience is that it has consequences that you are willing to withstand to serve the greater good, just getting away with something is not the same thing.
I understand when regulators decide to side with strict enforcement when a companies only advantage comes from not following the rules. Especially when it is disputed the rules shouldn't be there.
It is pretty ridiculous in these cases, honestly. This particular picture didn't have a "photographer's studio" setup - it was an outdoor picture with the family around a long, metal farm gate and the photographer sold the customer the CD. There wasn't much the store could do to prevent this, and we had to start physically checking a lot of pictures at that store.
If they lock down microtargetting for housing related ads and have some code to flag housing ads posted in different categories they become compliant with the law. Nobody says they have to be 100% perfect to be compliment.
I was just reading in Jalopnik about how Toyota added reinforcement to their minivan to deal with small offset driver's side impacts, and then when a test for a similar passenger side impact was done, surprise surprise, there was no symmetric reinforcement on that side!
If a small town newspaper with a staff of 30 can do it, Facebook has both the staff and resources to do the same.
If it cannot, or will not, it should not take advertisements for sectors that are regulated.
If they're too big to be accountable then maybe they shouldn't exist.
I think not.
But nothing is stopping a black person from seeing the ad.
In FB's case, it's like posting an ad at a med school (any, med school, regardless of demographics) and say...you can only view this add if you're white.
When I was in college, lots of recruiters advertise and sponsor with the Society of Black Engineers...of Society of Women Engineers. Nothing stopped me from going to those meetings, and I did attend some. Their meetings were advertised to everyone. You weren't prevented from going to the meeting and listening to the recruiters.
Was I offended...yes and no, but more on the no side because I had the same opportunity as everyone else at school. I'll tell when I was offended. I went to a career fair one semester I saw Microsoft booth that advertised scholarships for minorities (or maybe internships? I don't know, I hope not because that woulda been illegal, in hindsight!).
There was a young Indian woman staffing the booth and I asked if I could apply. She said no...looking for blacks and hispanics. I'm Asian...so was she. Microsoft shoulda sent a black/hispanic engineer to send their message across better, too.
Let’s just say when they walk the neighborhood and I open the door, they are flummoxed when they don’t feel comfortable using their usually spiel...
If you take out an advertisement in a Catholic newspaper, you're focusing on Catholics. But non-Catholics may still read your advertisement if they come upon your newspaper. There is no method in traditional physical media to specifically exclude any demographic; there are only ways to emphasize one demographic over another. This makes digital advertising with demographic-based exclusion (rather than demographic-based inclusion) incomparable to a newspaper.
That difference may seem hollow but it is a difference of category, rather than degree. More important than this point is the observation that these kinds of debates quickly devolve into litigating the appropriateness of imperfect analogies rather than the original issue itself.
That sounds incredibly broad and impossible to to avoid.
As in the Alamo Drafthouse is more than welcome to have a women's night event for a particular movie, but if they refuse men at the door solely for their gender, that is illegal.
https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/alamo-drafthouse-admi...
Can you articulate a difference between "targeting" and "discriminating", other than one being legal and one being illegal?
I live in Austin and support the Drafthouse's lighthearted attempt to offer women an opportunity to enjoy themselves by themselves.
I am not a lawyer but it always struck me as unfair to a whole gender to treat them differently when they want to enter nightclubs. But of course this policy is also very ageist, biased against heavyset people etc. So do we ban that as well, since it's not something people can control?
Lack of advertising is not the same as "refuse to sell".
Tech has changed so you can do the targeting. You are violating the spirit of the law. The point is if you make sure blacks, Mexicans, or women can't see your ad you are trying to exclude them.
However, what FB is doing is...that young couple reads the magazine and can't see the ad, but a senior citizen can.
IANAL...and for what it's worth there's a similar lawsuit for age discrimination for job hiring. Post ads only for certain age target.
https://www.thebalance.com/fair-housing-act-violation-179889...
The fact an LGBT dating site can choose ‘don’t show to heterosexual people (a waste of my ad spend)’ is one of the reasons their platform is so effective, especially compared to mass media like TV/magazines.
For instance, here's a US pharmacy chain – notice it mentions photos on the home page.
However, I've not been able to find any evidence of this. It could just be a just-so story.
But the very start of the post says it's illegal for housing.
Housing is a regulated industry where discrimination in certain ways is not allowed. The idea is allegedly that a room is a room and a tenant is a tenant, regardless of race or age or etc. The government has decreed that housing is too important of a consumer item to allow landlords to police themselves.
Unfortunately, many landlords find ways to skirt the law.
And in the case of sub-leasing and finding roommates, discrimination is totally legal. I can make a post saying "female only". Additionally, upon an in person meeting, I can even turn away a roommate who is female but isn't Asian for example.
It's a bit shameful that you flagged the parent and not the grandparent, who seems to be playing devil's advocate purely for the sake of an argument.
You are actually the one violating that policy.
The Internet has a great search for secret closet racists, but they're pretty rare. For the most part, it makes sense to give people the benefit of the doubt.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/12/interracial-marria...
I sincerely hope this isn't an intimation that Asians are somehow immune from forms of racism or racially charged behavior?
Would you be able to clarify this a bit? Maybe I've misunderstood you.
Putting words into people's mouths like that is incredibly rude, and dishonest.
The legal threshold for discrimination is set a lot lower for housing than it is in other scenarios For good reason too -- the consequences of discriminated, for example, at a coffee shop are far less impactful than being discriminated for what housing you can find and obtain.
https://www.sharinghousing.com/what-the-fair-housing-act-mea...
Craigslist says something different.
https://www.craigslist.org/about/FHA#roommates
Under federal Fair Housing law, the prohibition on discriminatory advertisements applies to all situations except the following:
Shared Housing Exemption -- If you are advertising a shared housing unit, in which tenants will be sharing a bathroom, kitchen, or other common area, you may express a preference based upon sex only.
Private Club and Religious Exemptions -- A religious community or private club whose membership is not restricted based upon race, color, or national origin may restrict tenancy only to its members in a property that it owns, and may advertise to that effect.
Housing for Older Persons Exemption -- As discussed below, certain complexes for elderly persons are exempt from prohibitions on familial status discrimination, including the prohibitions on discriminatory advertising.
>Decision-making: Although the prohibition on discriminatory advertising applies to roommate and shared housing situations, federal Fair Housing laws do not cover the basis of decisions made by landowners who own less than four units, and live in one of the units. This means that in a situation in which a landlord owns less than four rental units, and lives in one of the units, it is legal for the owner to discriminate in the selection process based on the aforementioned categories, but it is illegal for that owner to advertise or otherwise make a statement expressing that discriminatory preference.
I wonder if someone who has a particular dietary restriction (kosher, halal, gluten free, vegan, etc.) can express a preference for a like minded person.
I also told the recruiter that I wasn’t going to hire a guy because he smelled like cigarette smoke, I would be working closely with him and it bothered my asthma. Cigarette smoking is not protected in some states - including mine.
So if you're the Catholic Church running a women's boarding house on the upper east side of Manhattan, you are allowed to advertise to (and rent to) only women, but you can't restrict it further to only Catholic women.
Speaking of which, the Roomi app might potentially be doing illegal things in turning housing search into a social network.
There is a very big difference between no micro-targeting ads ever, and no micro-targeting for housing ads.
If one had a list of proxies for every ethnicity and individually assigned all but one would it qualify as legal targeting or illegal discrimination?
Would this format derived from US ethnicity census be legal: [x] White [] Black or African American [x] American Indian or Alaska Native [x] Asian or Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
but a query of 'exclude "Black or African American"' be considered illegal even if they both map to an abbreviated form of hexadecimal B? Although it could be argued that by making the discriminators have to work harder to figure out how to exercise bigotry in advertising is a reasonable baseline.
The spirit of the law is clear but I wonder about the mechanics of it for avoiding all of the gross loopholes and technicalities and enforceability. Just advertising home listings in 'Farmer's Weekly' (for sake of example assuming it has an overwhelmingly white subscriber base) for selling an exurban house wouldn't prove discriminatory intent and short of memos giving racist directives to the marketing department being released.
Yes. Which is a good thing, because it saves time both to renters and landlords.
It also does not offend anyone, because there is no public age discrimination wording in the ad.
The most important part for our discussion here: there is no public promotion of age superiority in these ads. Therefore this Fair_Housing_Act does NOT apply.
When it comes to protected classes, it's not 'saving time' because a landlord acting legally is equally likely to rent to either group.
As a matter of fact, pet ownership is a strong proxy for a protected class [1].
Is your position that an apartment building owner should have to advertise to pet owners and non pet owners equally even if the apartment complex doesn't allow pets?
Come to think of it, isn't having a no-pets policy itself discriminatory?
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/250858/dog-or-cat-owners...
I know that pet friendly and non-pet friendly housing exists, so there must be some legal basis.
But if the current legal standard meant that it would be illegal to advertise to (or away from) pet owners then yes, I would expect that FB would have to remove those options for housing ads.
Guess that wasn’t the clear example I was hoping for.
A "no pets" policy, on its face, would have a disparate impact on different arms of a protected group, and so, on its face, should be illegal. I know that "no pets" policies tolerated at this point.
What I want to know is how you or anyone else can justify a "no pets" policy considering the protected group issue I raised above. Is the "no pets" policy just an unprincipled exception [1]?
I see no explanation for allowing "no pets" policies other than "yeah, 'no pets' amounts to illegal discrimination, but everyone does it, so it's okay". That's not a good basis on which to organize a society. Why or why not shouldn't people make another unprincipled exception for ad targeting?
[1] http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/04/a-series-of-unprinciple...
The issue is that nobody is really going to be bothered to spend the money to haul those things into court.
If I'm willing to spend that much money, I can apply that same amount of money and wind up using it far more effectively than getting into a specific club or gym.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/judge-rules-nightclub-en...
http://musicfeeds.com.au/news/dude-sues-melbourne-nightclub-...
Even a place which excludes men openly is allowed to operate, though this is borderlin. Lucille Roberts was a successful chain of female-only gyms advertising itself nationwide as just for women.
https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/04/women-only-social-c...
As it is they don’t seem to have put in the smallest possible effort to comply and decided to ignore the law completely.
Many people are very allergic to pets or scared of them and won’t live in a building/complex if there are animals there. If you’re a landlord and you allow pets you also have to deal with any possible damage they may do to your property, even though you can make the renter reimburse you for that.
It may be that because of those factors courts have determined that it’s perfectly reasonable for landlords to choose not to allow pets no matter what effect that may have on the number of people of different races who apply to their properties.
> You are violating the spirit of the law.
No.
The spirit of the law is to prohibit public racial propaganda. The spirit of the law is NOT about hunting down private biases.
I have no idea what you’re talking about with the “propaganda”, but everything you need to know is right there in the announcement: “The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in housing transactions including print and online advertisement on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, or familial status. HUD's Secretary-initiated complaint follows the Department's investigation into Facebook's advertising platform which includes targeting tools that enable advertisers to filter prospective tenants or homebuyers based on these protected classes.”
So both the spirit and letter of the law forbid discrimination, and they are arguing that Facebook enables illegal discrimination on their platform.
"Advertising housing" is NOT "housing transaction". Transaction happens when landlord and renter signing renting agreement.
Consider me a bit incredulous of that argument.
I guess, as a man of color I'm hesitant to create some sort of ranking system as to "who's getting whipped harder" as a metric when it comes to racial discrimination of all its permutations.
For their need to comply? No. They have to follow ineffective laws as long as they’re on the books.
>>(c) 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, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.
Answer me this. How on Facebook you would expect an excluded person to be able to know about the sale?
They wouldn't. The housing listing doesn't exist for them.
How do you see this as fair?!
I am blown away by all the casual racism all throughout this thread.
> § 109.25 Selective use of advertising media or content.
> The selective use of advertising media or content when particular combinations thereof are used exclusively with respect to various housing developments or sites can lead to discriminatory results and may indicate a violation of the Fair Housing Act. For example, the use of English language media alone or the exclusive use of media catering to the majority population in an area, when, in such area, there are also available non-English language or other minority media, may have discriminatory impact. Similarly, the selective use of human models in advertisements may have discriminatory impact. The following are examples of the selective use of advertisements which may be discriminatory:
> (a) Selective geographic advertisements. Such selective use may involve the strategic placement of billboards; brochure advertisements distributed within a limited geographic area by hand or in the mail; advertising in particular geographic coverage editions of major metropolitan newspapers or in newspapers of limited circulation which are mainly advertising vehicles for reaching a particular segment of the community; or displays or announcements available only in selected sales offices.
> (b) Selective use of equal opportunity slogan or logo. When placing advertisements, such selective use may involve placing the equal housing opportunity slogan or logo in advertising reaching some geographic areas, but not others, or with respect to some properties but not others.
> (c) Selective use of human models when conducting an advertising campaign. Selective advertising may involve an advertising campaign using human models primarily in media that cater to one racial or national origin segment of the population without a complementary advertising campaign that is directed at other groups. Another example may involve use of racially mixed models by a developer to advertise one development and not others. Similar care must be exercised in advertising in publications or other media directed at one particular sex, or at persons without children. Such selective advertising may involve the use of human models of members of only one sex, or of adults only, in displays, photographs or drawings to indicate preferences for one sex or the other, or for adults to the exclusion of children.
Targeted advertising was already a thing when these regulations were written decades ago; internet advertising is just a difference in scale and cost.
Mind you, I do think that ads targeted only to e.g. certain races are crappy and probably violate the law, but that certainly isn't as obvious from the links people are providing.
Its a hard truth to swallow.
The rest of this isn't directed just at you astura.
If this was some random Facebook or 4chan comment would you be so quick to come to that rationalization?
I feel we like to think the individuals we associate with on HN are like minded. To admit they aren't is almost a personal affront. To keep the disillusion going we must rationalize and make up excuses for them or how they behave.
But sometimes a duck is a duck.
I too am confused how targeting may be illegal under a law that forbids discrimination and discriminating content of ads - I am not familiar with the law. Lack of knowledge/understanding doesn’t make me “racist”.
Some other comments in this inflammatory thread helped me get the point, but your attacks on everybody as racists-by-defaul are deeply bigoted and insulting.
I still don't believe that merely providing the option to create potentially discriminatory ads is a problem for Facebook, since the same options have perfectly valid usage. It should be the landlord's responsibility to use them correctly.
Who did I accuse of racism? I stated people in the thread are being casually racist but didn't name any names.
Haven't we been learning as developers or operators that it's better to put processes and systems in place to prevent human error opposed to relying on human judgement alone? Why the slack with this issue?
Would you also require natural language processing to detect illegal text?
Thinking about it, people who disagree with me by thinking that it is okay to deny housing based on race is by definition racist, no? The fact is clearly spelled out in law.
I'm not even saying someone disagrees with me. Where do you see that? I stated that there is casual racism in this thread.
I understand there is confusion in the law regarding targeting specifically. But stand back and take a look at the bigger picture of what the technology we create could allow. Like other real self proclaimed proud racists who would only use the service without understanding how it works.
It's not that it's targeting. It's not allowing those your not targeting to be part of the open market.
If you are something, someone calling it out is not an attack or bigotry. Sometimes the truth hurts.