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HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

hud.gov

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Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#201

Post by quotemstr »

MBCook wrote: post #194
quotemstr wrote: post #178

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…

> 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.

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...

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#202

Post by AdamM12 »

Hermitian909 wrote: post #190
AdamM12 wrote: post #127

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…

If your edit is in earnest it's because your comment comes off as naive. Inefficiency _must_ be one of several deciding factors because our resources are limited. 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 individua…

To me that sounds like a trade off of due process and justness. Which I hold in high opinion of. At the EOD all laws are backed by violence. If the state is to resort to that they better be right.

edit: "...and justness"

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#203

Post by creaghpatr »

eahman00 wrote: post #121
samfisher83 wrote: post #49

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 w…

>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." It says "such as"; I'm interested if this list includes "synagogue" or "Torah". Is there any place the entire list is included?

I guess you could in theory go buy some ads on fb and see what it lets you scope

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#204

Post by MBCook »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #192
MBCook wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’d agree but it’s the corporate counsel’s job to make sure they know about this stuff. Did counsel never tell them ‘you MUST do something about this’, which seems like a huge failing, or has it been brought up and the executives decide ‘oh well we don’t care’ which would be a REALLY BAD thing to have a court find out about.

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.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#205

Post by jonathanyc »

dantheman wrote: post #155

A question if you run ads and tune your ad buy to focus on those people with the highest conversion rate. To reduce the amount you're spending by targeting the ads, does this mean that's not allowed? 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 pop…

You’re missing the point entirely. The complaint is about what Facebook has designed their platform to allow, which is very clearly illegal and for very clear reasons. What’s not not clear is how you’ve come to the conclusion that landlords are “where the fault lies”; you’re begging the question by assuming that the fault can entirely be placed on one group or the other. One thing at a time.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#206

Post by AdamM12 »

astura wrote: post #189
GordonS wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook isn't discriminating This feels like a technicality - Facebook is overtly enabling , perhaps even encouraging discrimination.

And profiting from it. 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!!

Is this sarcasm? Legitimate question because I don't see what the issue with these statements are.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#207

Post by mindslight »

ABCLAW wrote: post #140
xphilter wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not true. I was able to draw actual red lines excluding zip codes from seeing a housing ad. But this was 8-10 months ago. It’s possible they changed the UI.

Was Legal just sleeping at the wheel? This is a very well known piece of history. I wonder how this conversation went when they were drawing up this feature.

Not preventing people from doing something illegal is not itself illegal?

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#208

Post by dantheman »

beagle3 wrote: post #176
dantheman wrote: post #155

A question if you run ads and tune your ad buy to focus on those people with the highest conversion rate. To reduce the amount you're spending by targeting the ads, does this mean that's not allowed? 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 pop…

Compare to jobs. It’s ok to require candidates to speak a minority language iff that has something to do with the job. But it is not ok to require a specific age, gender or marital status. Landlord ads are more or less like job ads, in that sense.

These aren't requirements though; it's not like saying you must speak Italian to live here. It's more like advertising a job posting for a doctor in a medical journal instead of a car magazine.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#209

Post by MBCook »

quotemstr wrote: post #191
MBCook wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 questi…

> We know that these regulations will not in fact stop housing discrimination

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.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#210

Post by freeone3000 »

quotemstr wrote: post #167
freeone3000 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen targeted ads that do work? An advertisement for a product you actually want?

Yes. Do you have an argument based on evidence, or at least reason, or are we going to continue like this?

Your arguments are irrelevant because they do not match my experiences. Are you telling me to disbelieve my eyes?
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