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HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

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191–200 of 568 posts

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#191
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Our legal system will not hold Facebook liable for a case like that. 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.

The problem with your argument is FB doesn’t matter to your point. 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?

You are misrepresenting my position. Where did I suggest that FB get an exemption from the law? I never said that FB should get special treatment. For clarity, FB should follow the law and prohibit targeting of housing ads based on this list of criteria.

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.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#192
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Except that’s literally illegal in housing. 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.

I’m surprised it took this long for them to be sued.

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.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#193

Essentially an archaic organisation using an archaic law against a modern ad delivery platform. What a travesty.

Would you please stop using HN primarily for political battle? It's destructive of what this site exists for, the site guidelines ask you not to, and we ban accounts that continue doing it, regardless of their politics.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#194
post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If only FB had an insane amount of data that could trivially be used to figure out if a given criteria would have a disparate impact. 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.

Is your position that it should be illegal to use a criterion in ad targeting if the use of this criterion results in an ad being seen by one arm of a protected category more than another arm? That's a consistent position, but it amounts to banning of ad targeting. Is that the world you want?

The law explicitly says you can’t discriminate housing ads against certain groups. Courts have held that Things that aren’t illegal on their face can be illegal if they have highly discriminatory effect in practice.

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.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a party to a potential rental contract or contract to sale. They aren't in a position to deny someone housing.

No, they're just in a position to allow rampant discrimination.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#196
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is your position that it should be illegal to use a criterion in ad targeting if the use of this criterion results in an ad being seen by one arm of a protected category more than another arm? That's a consistent position, but it amounts to banning of ad targeting. Is that the world you want?

The law explicitly says you can’t discriminate housing ads against certain groups. Courts have held that Things that aren’t illegal on their face can be illegal if they have highly discriminatory effect in practice. 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…

Is the answer to my question "yes" or "no"?

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#197
I'm no fan of Facebook or discrimination, and am happy to see this pursued by the federal government, but I personally would gladly be excluded from all ads, ranging from billboards to search results to food packaging.

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.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#198
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is it more important that they "appear[] to be trying" than that the policy imposed on them actually achieve the ostensible policy goal?

For their legal case? I’d think so. It looks way better that you were trying to do something and weren’t very effective than that you decided not to bother.

For their need to comply? No. They have to follow ineffective laws as long as they’re on the books.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#199

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.

I think that the public and the courts are correctly recognizing that the excuse that a human never sees something doesn't exempt an organization of the regulatory burden borne by companies where the work is done proportionally more by humans. 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 rea…

> , 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.

I highly doubt that the majority of advertising business for Facebook and Google comes solely from discriminatory housing ads.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#200

Can anyone tell me what kind of penalty Facebook could face for this? Are we talking 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?

Just a small fine and remedial action to resolve the violation. This also happens to traditional businesses.
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