HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#141

Post by EB66 » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:50 PM UTC

mikec3010 wrote: post #131

EB66 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And that’s not even necessarily a bad thing. ...what? Are you suggesting it's a good thing that we bring back red lining and other discriminatory practices?

If you dont show someone an ad, that's not discrimination. It's just not advertising to a group of people.

It's a form of discrimination though admittedly not the most egregious form of discrimination. The HUD has explicit regulations and guidelines involving "Selective use of advertising media or content" and "Selective geographic advertisements".

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.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#142

Post by MBCook » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:51 PM UTC

AdamM12 wrote: post #122

jjeaff wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't a law on the books prohibiting hardware stores from selling knives. There is a law on the books prohibiting publishers from publishing descriminitory ads, even if they didn't write them. That's the difference.

The difference is that the law shouldn't even be on the books imo. The person discriminating is the private property owner/manager they engaged in the advertising. Facebook did not.

Knives have legal uses.

In the context of housing ads (or employment) these tools DO NOT have legal uses.

Thus they are illegal.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#143

Post by selimthegrim » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:51 PM UTC

sincerely wrote: post #104

dominotw wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was reading the list you edited out and I was like "yeah I don't want to live next to any of those", I wish there was app for doing the reverse about your neighbors before you rent a place. Then I felt bad for thinking that thought.

For what it's worth, I edited it out because I couldn't figure out the formatting!

I think you’ve piqued everyone’s curiosity now.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#144

Post by sizzle » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:51 PM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #36

yardie wrote: post #26

How did they not see this coming. Are they not familiar with another dotcom called Craigslist who had to deal with this very same regulation years ago. Their counsel either wasn't aware of what FB marketplace was doing or didn't know about FHA laws. > 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…

Down the the literal words "red line"[0]. For, I suppose young or otherwise ignorant people, here: [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining

Wow this is a despicable practice, thanks for sharing.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#145

Post by MBCook » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:52 PM UTC

nv-vn wrote: post #113

maratd wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is your argument? That if there's a bad law on the books, we shouldn't have laws?

My argument is just that not all laws are good, and following the law does not equate to doing the right thing.

And they’re free to take that position and face the consequences.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#146

Post by GordonS » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:53 PM UTC

AdamM12 wrote: post #127

Maybestring wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should. Allowing large commercial entities to facilitilate discrimination and only going after individual landlords would be an extremely inefficient use of limited resources.

The inefficiency of the process shouldn't be a deciding factor. Should be the justness of it. Facebook isn't discriminating. We don't punish shipping companies when their resources are used for drug smuggling. We punish the individuals involved in the illicit act. edit: Not entirely sure how arguing that our system should be a just one more so than one that goes after what is easiest is getting down voted so much but…

> Facebook isn't discriminating

This feels like a technicality - Facebook is overtly enabling, perhaps even encouraging discrimination.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#147

Post by StudentStuff » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:54 PM UTC

nv-vn wrote: post #94

beager wrote: post #12

It would seem fairly straightforward for Facebook to collect information about whether an advertisement pertains to something that has anti-discriminatory regulations tied to it (housing, employment). 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 o…

It's easy until you realize how global Facebook's audience is. What happens if California makes this type of advertising illegal for hotels and Sri Lanka makes it illegal for movie theaters? Now repeat for every possible advertising law.

The telecom industry is already 40 years down this path, the level of regulations, state, county and city E911 fees and operating regulations is impressive. If scrappy, insolvent players like Sprint can write code to comply with onerous, numerous and varying regulations across 7000 different LATAs, Facebook can handle writing code to comply with national laws in 200 odd countries.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#148

Post by MBCook » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:54 PM UTC

quotemstr wrote: post #136

maratd wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a start. They weren't even doing that.

Your use of the phrase "it's a start" suggests that further restrictions will follow.

No, it implies that they at least appeared to be trying, even if it wasn’t very effective.

As it is they don’t seem to have put in the smallest possible effort to comply and decided to ignore the law completely.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#149

Post by quotemstr » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:54 PM UTC

sincerely wrote: post #138

quotemstr wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it wrong to publish an ad on the Wall Street Journal website and not run the same ad on the Teen Vogue website ?

Is that something that actually happens? Do people say "let's run this ad on teenvogue.com"? Don't websites (especially businesses of the scale of WSJ/vogue/etc) get their ads from ad networks?

My question stands.

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?

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#150

Post by ghaff » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 9:54 PM UTC

maym86 wrote: post #124

quotemstr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of really bad policy gets enacted because advocates don't honestly ask themselves, "What are the foreseeable consequences of the policy I'm advocating?" That is, a failure to ask the question "And then what?" results in a lot of unnecessary misery. 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…

My point was your premise is making up imaginary scenarios that aren't actually happening as a way of creating an issue with the clear problems outlined and this isn't helpful. Creating an imaginary general problem as a way of attacking the specific issue is disingenuous.

More generally, housing discrimination will happen at the individual level in all sorts of subtle and not so subtle ways that can’t be generally stopped. That doesn’t mean you throw your hands up and say that we might as allow any sort of discrimination.