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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

#511

Post by bonzini »

pests wrote: post #472
bonzini wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no indication of preference/limitation/discrimination in the content that reaches the end user of Facebook.

The lengths at which you are going to rationalize racism just astounds me. Answer me this. How on Facebook you would expect an excluded person to be able to know about the sale? They wouldn't. The housing listing doesn't exist for them. How do you see this as fair?! I am blown away by all the casual racism all throughout this thread.

I don't see it as fair. I am not American so I am not familiar with the law. The other comment that replied to me explained why it's also illegal, without accusing anyone of racism.

I still don't believe that merely providing the option to create potentially discriminatory ads is a problem for Facebook, since the same options have perfectly valid usage. It should be the landlord's responsibility to use them correctly.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#512

Post by alx_hghs »

rattray wrote: post #346
skywhopper wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're missing the point, though, which is not that the advertisers can target the models in the ads, but so they can choose _not_ to show ads to "undesireable" people, like people with kids, or of a certain ethnicity or religion. This sort of practice is an extremely pervasive problem that has led to enormous amounts of systemic inequality.

I think they're saying that the tool may have been used like this: 1) Create an ad targeting straight couples, and hide it from gay couples. 2) Create an ad targeting gay couples, and hide it from straight couples. If you query for "is anyone running an ad hidden from gay couples", this would return "yes". However, my hunch (hope?) is that the prosecution was clever enough to account for this, and are specifically fi…

Sounds reminiscent of the separate but equal argument

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#513

Post by rocqua »

roel_v wrote: post #497
downandout wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is wrong with excluding certain areas from seeing your ad? If I'm selling high end jewelry, for example, I don't want my ad shown to people in low income areas, because every click is a waste of money. Similarly, a discount store in a bad part of town may want to exclude wealthy neighborhoods, as people from those neighborhoods are unlikely to come to the store. That doesn't seem like something anyone sh…

You're arguing about how you think things should be, which is boring and trite, because opinions are like assholes - everybody's got one and most of them stink. What this is about, is how things are , and how they are is that redlining is illegal. So if you would take some time to look into the socioeconomic and legal history of this issue, you will find explained (ad nauseum) why certain choices were made in the pas…

A common trend when tech companies are hit by regulation outside their direct business is to argue the regulation shouldn't apply. Sometimes the reasoning is that the issues of regulation are solved by tech, sometimes it is that the regulations impede innovation, sometimes the reasoning states that the net benefit outweighs the occasional loss.

Often such arguments are just trying to prevent regulation, but there are situations where regulation wasn't written with this tech in mind and therefore doesn't quite apply. At the very least, the discussion can be fruitful.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#514

Post by extralego »

sorokod wrote: post #494
matchagaucho wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of the responsibility falls on the Landlord, given they created the targeted ad segments? It's not like the Facebook Ad Manager has a guided wizard for the real estate industry to target prospective tenants.

It is not like there is a physical law of responsibility conservation. Multiple entities can carry 100% responsibility.

Bless this comment. I think this is a succinct representation of the struggles we are facing as a society.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#515

Post by rocqua »

alx_hghs wrote: post #512
rattray wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they're saying that the tool may have been used like this: 1) Create an ad targeting straight couples, and hide it from gay couples. 2) Create an ad targeting gay couples, and hide it from straight couples. If you query for "is anyone running an ad hidden from gay couples", this would return "yes". However, my hunch (hope?) is that the prosecution was clever enough to account for this, and are specifically fi…

Sounds reminiscent of the separate but equal argument

It seems rather easy to solve to me.

Are the adds structured to exclude certain groups from certain properties: Problem

Are the adds structured to engage each group as much as possible: No problem.

There might be some grey area where you decide not to market certain properties to certain groups, because you think they aren't interested rather then because you don't want them.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#516

Post by rocqua »

savanaly wrote: post #416
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.

If there are good reasons why one ethnicity would prefer housing over another (or, equivalently, if the housing provider would prefer them) then it's just like the beauty products thing and discrimination in advertising should be allowed. And if there aren't then it's hardly worth the time to ban it-- anyone who engaged in it would be wasting their time. So although it seems unclear whether that conditional is met, e…

> If there are good reasons why ... the housing provider would prefer them

Housing is a neccesity in life. Therefore, discrimination by housing providers is a real problem. Being excluded from parts of the housing market is very different from being excluded from parts of the beauty market. Even more so because housing viable for e.g. white people is equally viable for black people. Whereas the same does not hold for beauty products.

Now, if indeed the other case were to occur (where one ethnicity is not interested in certain housing, and advertising reflects this) that would be less obviously bad. However, like I stated it seems less likely that this would occur. Moreover, this is a very convenient cover for people who do wish to discriminate.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#517

Post by rocqua »

briandear wrote: post #45
austincheney wrote: post #31

Here are the likely relevant laws in question: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Housing_Act * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 By law you cannot discriminate by any designation of protected class, which includes not only parties to a business transaction but also messaging and opportunities there upon. I do understand why Facebook would allow ad display filtering by race and other demographi…

My question would be if an advertiser advertised housing in a demographically targeted publication, for example, a publication focused only on single gay men, if that would necessarily function as discrimination since single mothers wouldn’t be reading that publication, nor those ads. Facebook allows demographic targeting that just happens to be more “effective,” but no more discriminatory that the way conventional t…

If a housing provider has a policy of only advertising in targeted publications, that is an issue. Same goes if it only holds for a subset of their offering (e.g. only for 'jewish neighborhoods'). However, if there is a decent enough effort to also advertise in widely read publications, there doesn't seem to be an issue.

I would say, using targeted publications 'in addition' is not an issue, but using them as the 'main avenue' is an issue.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#518

Post by rocqua »

LanceH wrote: post #342

So if I get a radio license and then broadcast an illegal ad, it's the FCC's fault. Why is everyone trying so hard to turn facebook (and google, twitter, etc...) into a filter on everything we say? When facebook gets held responsible for all content in all jurisdiction it will err on the side of proscription. It was only about 10 years ago that many now acceptable (mandatory even) progressive positions were not in fa…

Note that other publishers are also liable under these laws. By that I mean papers, craigslist, etc.

This is a specific law targeting specific advertisements. For many other kinds of advertising, facebook is still free from liability. The reason housing advertisements get special treatment is that housing is both a neccesity, and housing trends have a very strong effect on society.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#519

Post by ubernostrum »

joelhaasnoot wrote: post #33
koboll wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about this complaint would prevent Facebook from addressing it without humans involved? All they're going to do is revoke microtargeting abilities from housing ads.

How do they determine what's a housing ad? There's two pieces to this a) Facebook makes this possible and b) Facebook damns themselves and promotes that they make this possible for housing. Part b is easy to fix: make it harder to do housing ads that are targeted. However, part a is much harder: what stops me from advertising my AirBnb listing as a URL on Facebook as a "generic ad"?

How do they determine what's a housing ad?

By doing it.

Facebook loves to try to play both sides, and claim to paying customers that it absolutely has the ability to do a thing, while turning round and saying to regulators that it is only a poor helpless social-media network utterly lacking in the ability to do such things.

If even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the capabilities Facebook claims in its materials for advertisers are genuine, it can figure out which ads are housing ads.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#520

Post by pests »

vsl wrote: post #507
pests wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be easier to believe they are being disingenuous but the real answer is probably that they are in fact racist. Its a hard truth to swallow. The rest of this isn't directed just at you astura. If this was some random Facebook or 4chan comment would you be so quick to come to that rationalization? I feel we like to think the individuals we associate with on HN are like minded. To admit they aren't is almost a pe…

Give me a break. Not everybody that disagrees with you is a racist. Landlord that prefer to not have couples with children aren’t racist. I too am confused how targeting may be illegal under a law that forbids discrimination and discriminating content of ads - I am not familiar with the law. Lack of knowledge/understanding doesn’t make me “racist”. Some other comments in this inflammatory thread helped me get the poi…

Not by default. After posting a comment supportive of denying the possibility of buying a house based on race and then making up rationalizations for why it's okay. Do you really believe in all of the hundreds of comments from various commentors that not one person here could actually really really in fact be racist?

Thinking about it, people who disagree with me by thinking that it is okay to deny housing based on race is by definition racist, no? The fact is clearly spelled out in law.

I'm not even saying someone disagrees with me. Where do you see that? I stated that there is casual racism in this thread.

I understand there is confusion in the law regarding targeting specifically. But stand back and take a look at the bigger picture of what the technology we create could allow. Like other real self proclaimed proud racists who would only use the service without understanding how it works.

It's not that it's targeting. It's not allowing those your not targeting to be part of the open market.

If you are something, someone calling it out is not an attack or bigotry. Sometimes the truth hurts.

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