181–190 of 568 posts
Why is Facebook in trouble for this and not the persons who actually placed the ads? They aren't the ones renting the real estate. They don't own it. Government overreach imo. Edit: grammatical mistakes
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"?
Why is Facebook in trouble for this and not the persons who actually placed the ads? They aren't the ones renting the real estate. They don't own it. Government overreach imo. Edit: grammatical mistakes
Technically, the people who placed the ads are also liable. 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"?
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> draw a red line around zip codes and then not display ads to Facebook users who live in specific zip codes. 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.
No, specifying individual zip codes sounds like the worst way to do that. The obvious way is to have a max distance slider.
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?
Seems to me that the courts and the public are becoming much less tolerant of companies operating on Google scale, where most things are decided by algorithms and a human never sees it at all. This might serve as an upper bound on the size of future companies: if you might have liability for every single ad or comment you let someone post, you’re going to want human review of all that content.
Companies operating on Google scale should also have the scale to ensure that their ad platform doesn't enable people to target ads discriminately, especially when it's on something like housing where there are laws against that. They're probably more worried about their quarterly results and shareholders than they are about potential problems until it becomes a big problem.
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> The slippy slope here is already in operation. Except there are 40 years of court decisions clarifying how the law should be interpreted.
Most of the case law dates from before internet advertising microtargeting. We're in novel legal territory here. 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.
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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.
How would a common person know they were discriminated against digitally on Facebook? Why should such a tool geared towards discrimination of protected classes not be held liable when there is no alternative legal use case for allowing filtering of protected classes for displaying of housing ads. As a user of Facebook, this method of discrimination is markedly different than physically showing up to a house for rent…
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Of course Facebook should allow racial filtering. Not understanding this is a fundamental failure to understand minority businesses. Let's say hypothetically you're selling a product that is highly ethnically selected, like beauty products (before any criticism keep in mind that the first self made American female millionaire, cj walker made her fortune on beauty products) - should you be forced to buy advertising im…
Of course Facebook should allow racial filtering. Not understanding this is a fundamental failure to understand minority businesses. 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…
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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.
The HUD press release contains the following text, which is pretty damning:
>Additionally, Facebook promotes its advertising targeting platform for housing purposes with "success stories" for finding "the perfect homeowners," "reaching home buyers," "attracting renters" and "personalizing property ads."
Yowzers!!
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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…
Tying resources up in a maximally just be deeply inefficient process prevents us from dealing with other problems of injustice for whom the solution requires more resources. The world _requires_ us to consider factors other than maximal justice in individual cases if we are to maximize justice in a broader societal context.