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HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

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Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#551

Post by vt_throwaway123 »

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.

The problem with this reasoning is that assuming the content of the ad is not discriminatory, delivering the ad to some subset of your audience is highly unlikely to be illegal. For example, if you're a publisher that owns two magazines, one of which is popular among blacks and another is popular among whites, I don't think it's still illegal to publish ads on one but not the other, again, provided that the ad itself does not have illegal contents. The onus must be on the advertiser because the full extent of the targeting for the given campaign is not knowable for the publisher. Maybe the advertiser wants to reach men on one publisher and women on another publisher, this isn't something any given publisher can fully determine. Given how advertising works and has worked in the past, it's unlikely that any law would put the responsibility on a publisher for an entire campaign to be free of illegal discrimination on the basis of an audience it reaches.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#552

Post by vt_throwaway123 »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #13

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 you're conflating two unrelated dimensions - automation and size. Traditional ad-buying for TV operates at scale but without much automation. Meanwhile, there are plenty of players in the ad business that aren't particularly large but operate without much human oversight.

What this does is increasing the cost of serving small customers, while having negligible impact on the cost of serving large customers. This likely means companies like Google and Facebook will stop serving small businesses that cannot guarantee a certain budget. In a way, we live in a fairly rare time in that a small startup has access to AWS, Azure, GCP, FB ad manager and Google adwords, getting access to most of the same functionalities afforded to larger companies, while operating on tiny budgets without needing account management. This isn't true of many other industries or even services within the same industries. As is, I don't think small businesses are particularly profitable segments for these companies.

This is exactly what already happened with Youtube demonetization - the increased scrutiny on content safety and importance of having human content auditors made monetizing large groups of small-time publishers on Youtube entirely uneconomical for Google. So they got the boot. So in a sense, we should conclude the exact opposite here - automation is what allows a level-playing field for small players and if you take it away through putting a huge amount of pressure on platforms to police behavior of individual customers, it will accelerate consolidation in other industries.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#553

Post by vt_throwaway123 »

JamisonM wrote: post #20
koenigdavidmj wrote: post #13

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…

The problem here is that this is the exact opposite of what's going on - the competitive advantage of many smaller companies these days is that they are not even close to being compliant with regulations but platforms often tolerate them because they are not responsible for counterparty compliance.

If you do however put that onus on the platforms, then it's entirely predictable that platforms will cut ties with small businesses. This is more or less what happened with GDPR - lots of small ad-tech players became large liabilities for others in the value chain, leading to more consolidation in the industry. Outside of technology, it's common for certain types of services or tools not to be made aware to small-time customers. The technology industry at large and the large tech companies in particular have so far bucked this trend in a way that created a huge amount of value for the world at large, but this doesn't have to be this way.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#554

Post by ne0sapi3n »

brennebeck wrote: post #412
ne0sapi3n wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HUD Secretary at the time was Julian Castro. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Castro

Doing a quick scan of his wiki I don’t see anything relevant? Or are you trying to imply something in particular and I just missed it?

Simply pointing out the leader of the department at fault. In my humble opinion, this is useful for holding bad government actors responsible.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#555

Post by sjg007 »

vt_throwaway123 wrote: post #551
twblalock wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem with this reasoning is that assuming the content of the ad is not discriminatory, delivering the ad to some subset of your audience is highly unlikely to be illegal. For example, if you're a publisher that owns two magazines, one of which is popular among blacks and another is popular among whites, I don't think it's still illegal to publish ads on one but not the other, again, provided that the ad itself…

In this case the targeting of the ad is discriminatory and illegal. That is the context of the ad which is just as important as the content.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#556

Post by EGreg »

bsder wrote: post #428
EGreg wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen, in most cities they turn away men based on gender, or make them pay a cover, while they let well-dressed women in. That is their business model. I guess they can claim that men's attraction to women is a compelling business reason, which I believe may be an exception to the anti-discrimination laws. Similar to women-only gyms saying that women's desire to avoid men while working out is a compelling business r…

Both situations you have cited are actually probably in violation of the law. The issue is that nobody is really going to be bothered to spend the money to haul those things into court. If I'm willing to spend that much money, I can apply that same amount of money and wind up using it far more effectively than getting into a specific club or gym.

I am sure there are plenty of people with money to burn if they could win such a case and make a point in the national news. In fact, they did and LOST. I don’t think such a case is winnable. Even by a seasoned lawyer.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/judge-rules-nightclub-en...

http://musicfeeds.com.au/news/dude-sues-melbourne-nightclub-...

Even a place which excludes men openly is allowed to operate, though this is borderlin. Lucille Roberts was a successful chain of female-only gyms advertising itself nationwide as just for women.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/04/women-only-social-c...

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#557

Post by google_censors »

vt_throwaway123 wrote: post #553
JamisonM wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem here is that this is the exact opposite of what's going on - the competitive advantage of many smaller companies these days is that they are not even close to being compliant with regulations but platforms often tolerate them because they are not responsible for counterparty compliance. If you do however put that onus on the platforms, then it's entirely predictable that platforms will cut ties with small…

The real problem here is that Facebook is operating in an area where it doesn't have a license and didn't bother to follow the laws that 2 million US real estate agents learned as part of the basic licensing. The onus has been on the platforms for years, but they've all been happy to take real estate ads because its lucrative despite the rules they have to follow. What makes Facebook so special in all of this, when small newspapers and one-person real estate shops have been able to follow these rules for decades?

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#558

Post by JamisonM »

vt_throwaway123 wrote: post #553
JamisonM wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The problem here is that this is the exact opposite of what's going on - the competitive advantage of many smaller companies these days is that they are not even close to being compliant with regulations but platforms often tolerate them because they are not responsible for counterparty compliance. If you do however put that onus on the platforms, then it's entirely predictable that platforms will cut ties with small…

In this case who are the smaller companies you are referring to specifically?

If the small companies in question are gaining competitive advantage through non-compliance that makes them viable enterprises then it is good and correct that they should be forced to change their business model and compete with the same rules as everyone else, right?

I don't understand what you are saying with this: "Outside of technology, it's common for certain types of services or tools not to be made aware to small-time customers. The technology industry at large and the large tech companies in particular have so far bucked this trend in a way that created a huge amount of value for the world at large.."

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#559

Post by downandout »

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…

My comment was in response to a specific comment criticizing the exclusion of certain zip codes. To my knowledge, zip codes are not legally protected discrimination criteria. I suppose one could argue that they can be a proxy for excluding people based on criteria that is legally protected, however, that argument is unlikely to be successful if the primary motivation for using zip codes was to target those of certain income levels, which is also not legally protected.

In the future, before saying such snarky things (which are of little value to the discussion), perhaps you should read the comment you are responding to. The first sentence of my comment limited its scope to the location issue:

What exactly is wrong with excluding certain areas from seeing your ad?

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#560

Post by hateniggers88 »

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…

you are a disgusting coalburner, get fucked :-DDDDDD
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