HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook • Hacker News Board

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#371

Post by xphilter » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 2:26 AM UTC

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.

No one at FB cares about anything. They bet (and have been right) that they can pay off whomever (“lobby”) so they can keep making $. This will result in nothing more than a little monetary fine and removal of one or two specific “features.” It’s just whack-a-mole.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#372

Post by xphilter » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 2:28 AM UTC

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 bs. FB makes inferences about and collects info from people then uses it against those same people by allowing exclusions from ads.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#373

Post by dnautics » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 2:29 AM UTC

asveikau wrote: post #357

dnautics wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do understand why Facebook would allow ad display filtering by race and other demographic categorizations since they are a media organization who sells advertising. Whether or not that practice is morally qualified or agreeable it makes sense from a business perspective (oh how I do detest advertising).

That's them agreeing with you that it's not illegal in the general case, and makes sense, even. But the very start of the post says it's illegal for housing.

Nobody is arguing legality. I'm making a moral (not business) argument for allowing discrimination in the general case, on the grounds that disallowing discrimination disadvantages minority entrepreneurs.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#374

Post by FireBeyond » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 2:35 AM UTC

UncleEntity wrote: post #51

I'm not really seeing how it's Facebook's job to enforce this particular law as opposed to the HUD whose job it is to go after landlords/sellers doing the actual discriminating. Just because the advertiser can use these tools to discriminate doesn't mean they actually do or mean they aren't 100% personally responsible to comply with the law. I was kind of under the impression there were checks and balances to prevent…

Facebook can tell that something is problematic / illegal.

So, Facebook should be free to profit from taking and selling, displaying those ads, without restriction? After all, they're not the ones doing anything illegal, right?

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#375

Post by thaumasiotes » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 2:37 AM UTC

MBCook wrote: post #154

toddsiegel wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, since most cases are not so blatantly obvious as this, using disparate impact is often how these cases are brought.

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.

You don't need an insane amount of data. It's easy to figure out if any given criteria will have a disparate impact -- all criteria have a disparate impact.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#376

Post by anoncoward111 » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 2:38 AM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #373

asveikau wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's them agreeing with you that it's not illegal in the general case, and makes sense, even. But the very start of the post says it's illegal for housing.

Nobody is arguing legality. I'm making a moral (not business) argument for allowing discrimination in the general case, on the grounds that disallowing discrimination disadvantages minority entrepreneurs.

I agree with you that a black female should not have to pay to send ads to a white male for her hair weave products. FB should allow this level of segmentation and discrimination based on race for both moral and business reasons.

Housing is a regulated industry where discrimination in certain ways is not allowed. The idea is allegedly that a room is a room and a tenant is a tenant, regardless of race or age or etc. The government has decreed that housing is too important of a consumer item to allow landlords to police themselves.

Unfortunately, many landlords find ways to skirt the law.

And in the case of sub-leasing and finding roommates, discrimination is totally legal. I can make a post saying "female only". Additionally, upon an in person meeting, I can even turn away a roommate who is female but isn't Asian for example.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#377

Post by CydeWeys » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 2:38 AM UTC

kryogen1c wrote: post #41

This complaint seems like its shooting itself in the foot - discrimination isn't inherently bad. When you hire, you discriminate based on ability. When you date, you discriminate in a number of ways like beauty, personality, etc. If you're selling ads for wheelchairs you want to discriminate for people with disabilities. If your houses aren't wheelchair accessible, you want your ads to discriminate against people wit…

You might want to look into what the ADA requires about building accommodations for handicapped accessibility. Hint: You aren't compliant just by throwing up your hands and saying "We aren't accessible, don't bother", especially not for commercial real estate. I.e. you can't simply discriminate against handicapped people, which is the problem that necessitated the passing of the law in the first place.

Even residential real estate has to follow a bunch of codes though, like secure railings on all stairways for starters.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#378

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 2:39 AM UTC

doctorless wrote: post #248

cpkpad wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's what's being suggested. The idea that redlining should be reexamined by the courts every half century or so is what's being suggested. In 2018, courts ought to find its still illegal give facebook a book fine. In 2118? Hopefully we'll be past racism and courts will find the concept obsolete and antiquated. Or they may find racism is common but the tools needed to manage it are different. The Inte…

Having been in a mixed-race relationship where one partner is brown, I can tell you firsthandedly that if you think racism is rare, then you’re probably white or Asian or you have consistently lived in areas where racism is actually rare. I lived in places where when I was young, I never saw anyone engage in racist behaviors. This changed the moment I entered that relationship. It may have ended long ago, but it’s de…

[deleted]

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#379

Post by fjsolwmv » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 2:41 AM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #356

swerveonem wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook did this or housing companies used the Facebook targeting boolean option to configure ad campaigns in this way?

It doesn't really make a difference, because when housing companies use Facebook's targeting options it is still Facebook who accepts the ad and publishes it on facebook.com. If you do something illegal because someone asked you to do it, it's still illegal.

It's not obvious to me. If I photocopy an ilegal ad at Kinko's, is it Kinko's fault? If I send an illegal ad via first class mail, is it USPS's fault?

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#380

Post by danmg » Sun, Aug 19, 2018, 2:41 AM UTC

chickenfries wrote: post #311

Kenji wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a gay person, I see this all over the web. Smiling happy gay people buying cars or real estate or whatever. Good lord. Does that mean that so many advertisers track your activities so thoroughly that they figured out you're gay?

In the case of Facebook, you either put this in your profile, or the kinds of pages and events that you like and interact with will give this away. Not saying that it's not creepy, just that with the way we use the internet these days, it's not an epic feat for an advertiser to figure this out given the amount of data we put out there.

Actually in this case it's pretty easy. If you're gay and use dating apps, and didn't opt out of application usage history in your settings, the presence of those apps in your history will flag you as having that interest to advertisers. The google analytics get resold/repackaged, either directly or indirectly through data brokers, to Facebook. Facebook suddenly starts displaying ads for expensive mens' underwear.