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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

#211

Post by jonathanyc »

dantheman wrote: post #208
beagle3 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you seriously comparing advertising job openings to doctors with advertising apartments to only people of a certain race? You can’t just parameterize “x” and call it an argument.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#212

Post by MBCook »

quotemstr wrote: post #201
MBCook wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

I didn’t know that. Well, if it meets whatever HUD/the courts’ threshold is for something that’s too discriminatory then maybe that’s off the list.

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.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#213

Post by ABCLAW »

mindslight wrote: post #207
ABCLAW wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

That's not the legal test to determine if someone is afoul of the legal test that Facebook is accused of violating.

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.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#214

Post by ryandrake »

quotemstr wrote: post #178
MBCook wrote: 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?

It’s not just (presumably) his position, it’s the law. And there is a good reason for it. Look up red lining.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#215

Post by MBCook »

quotemstr wrote: post #196
MBCook wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

Sorry, I assumed you knew my answer was yes.

The law says the answer is yes if the discriminatory effect is strong enough (don’t know what the actual test is), so the answer MUST be yes.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#216

Post by AdamM12 »

dgzl wrote: post #195
AdamM12 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Craigslist and Backpage "allowed" rampant sex trafficking but I'd imagine the HN community wasn't happy with government shutting down those sections of the internet. FB isn't the one engaging in the discrimination imo.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#217

Post by perl4ever »

perl4ever wrote: post #65
astura wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compliance. 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.

Sure, but if you think the law serves a purpose, then one may ask whether being technically compliant is success.

"if you think the law serves a purpose" Surely it is not controversial here to suggest that anti-discrimination laws serve a purpose and therefore if someone finds a loophole that does not mean it is just fine?

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!

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#218

Post by astura »

freeone3000 wrote: post #160
quotemstr wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I supposed to accept your anecdote as evidence? I mean, on the one hand, we have the massive and continued success of platforms that tailor ads to target audiences, and on the other, we have freeone3000's complaint about a pizza ad not being relevant. 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 t…

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

Yes, I participated in a clinical trial I only found though Facebook ads. Since clinical trials are very specific on who they are recruiting, it's a great use of targeted ads.

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...

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#219

Post by quotemstr »

MBCook wrote: post #209
quotemstr wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> We don’t know that. I imagine if that was true it would have been proved clearly in the last 40 years.

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!

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#220

Post by quotemstr »

ryandrake wrote: post #214
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?

It’s not just (presumably) his position, it’s the law. And there is a good reason for it. Look up red lining.

So, is it your opinion that ad targeting is illegal?
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