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Facebook Accused by HUD of Housing Bias Over Use of Targeted Ads

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Re: Facebook Accused by HUD of Housing Bias Over Use of Targeted Ads

#141

Post by 6cd6beb »

bilbo0s wrote: post #105
briandear wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where I lived in Houston, they listed unacceptable races all the time. Definitely going to need a citation for this. I grew up in Houston and never saw an add specifying "unacceptable races" -- perhaps 50+ years ago maybe. My parents were in the rental business and we spent a lot of time looking at (and placing) ads -- never was race listed on an ad that I've ever seen for as long as I can remember (since the mid 1…

Woah. Calm down guy. The original comment was saying that, in Virginia, ... CRAIGSLIST ... would not openly mention the desired or unacceptable races for rentals. My only point was that, again, CRAIGSLIST ads certainly did have desired or unacceptable races listed in Houston. The fact is it's happened in Houston Craigslist, just as it's happened in Craigslist in lots of other places in the nation. There was a class a…

You can't be the "???", italics, and caps guy if you're gonna be the "Woah. Calm down guy." guy.

Either you're the one reacting strongly or you're the one chiding people for doing so. Doing both is poor form, to an extent that it stops mattering what else you type.

Re: Facebook Accused by HUD of Housing Bias Over Use of Targeted Ads

#142

Post by tzs »

legohead wrote: post #20
piokoch wrote: post #10

I am not sure I understand the way Fair Housing Act is enforced. Facebook allows ads targeting. This is how it earns money. Apparently some people decided that they want to advertise houses to white Christians population, which is illegal in the USA - shouldn't be HUD after those who configured such criteria, not Facebook? Facebook provided only a tool. Nobody is after hardware store because a hammer bought there was…

Facebook doesn't have to allow you to target demographics. If you create an ad, mark it as type "housing", then things like race and wealth shouldn't be an option to target. It's illegal. Using your analogy, when you buy a hammer you don't tell the cashier it's for murder.

As far as I can see neither Federal fair housing rules nor any state fair housing rules would cover wealth. Federal covers race, color, religion, national origin, sex, family status, and disability. Many states add more categories to those protected classes.

13 states (California, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, and Wisconsin) and DC consider "source of income" a basis for a protected class, and so you probably couldn't target ads in those states based on that, but I don't see anything that would cover wealth level rather than wealth source.

(Neat site with a nice way to look up which state protects what [1])

Since you can have a wealth requirement for renting (e.g., you can require that the person be able to afford the rent), there wouldn't be much point in prohibiting targeting based on that.

[1] http://lawatlas.org/datasets/state-fair-housing-protections-...

Re: Facebook Accused by HUD of Housing Bias Over Use of Targeted Ads

#143

Post by praneshp »

munk-a wrote: post #138
praneshp wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it typically free to invoke that insurance? Typically my driving insurance goes up if I make a claim. (Assuming someone stealing from you is not your fault)

I can't answer this with confidence, I suspect it would go up if you made a claim similar to other insurances. Though car insurance is a weird racket so business interruption insurances may not be able to get away with it.

> Though car insurance is a weird racket

Ha, I don't think I agree with you on the topic at hand, but this is something I'll get behind.

Re: Facebook Accused by HUD of Housing Bias Over Use of Targeted Ads

#144

Post by kingbirdy »

aaomidi wrote: post #120
kingbirdy wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're hiring someone who would have access to valuable information that could be sold, who would have information before the market, or who could potentially be paid to sabotage the company, it's important to ensure the candidate has good credit so they're less likely to do those things, since they at least wouldn't feel a financial pressure to do so and would only do it out of greed.

Is there direct evidence this is true or is it just a "common sense" thing that makes sense but might very well be false?

Do you mean evidence as to whether people with lower credit are likely to do such things against the company's interest? If so, I'm not sure. I just know it's something that is considered for govt purposes re: security clearances and that logic seems to carry over to private sector.

Re: Facebook Accused by HUD of Housing Bias Over Use of Targeted Ads

#145

Post by nimih »

praneshp wrote: post #136
munk-a wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The former is valid, the latter I disagree with strongly. Specifically... Too bad. There are costs and risks in employment and employees are exposed to lots of risks that can result in health issues, sudden termination (layoff) and a myriad of other problems, the slight risk an employer accepts when hiring new employees and investing in training absolutely can be offset by insurance (employers can get targeted insura…

Is it typically free to invoke that insurance? Typically my driving insurance goes up if I make a claim. (Assuming someone stealing from you is not your fault)

To the contrary, commercial insurance is often written to explicitly factor in the amount of claims that occur during the policy term, e.g. using retrospective rating[0]. Additionally, commercial underwriters typically have much more legal latitude in what they can consider when deciding whether—and for how much—to offer a policy contract: all states in the US have very strict rules about which sorts of claims can be considered when determining home and auto insurance rates for individuals (e.g. not-at-fault accidents and certain classes of weather damage are typically excluded)[1].

That being said, the brunt of the risk associated with a hiring decision lies with the employee in most situations (certainly in all the ones I’ve encountered personally working in retail and as a white-collar professional) in the US, and I would have to see some pretty startling numbers for an implied increase in insurance premiums to get anywhere near tipping that balance.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrospectively_rated_insura... [1] NB I’m only familiar with US insurance regulation, so perhaps things work differently in other countries.

Re: Facebook Accused by HUD of Housing Bias Over Use of Targeted Ads

#146

Post by SamReidHughes »

munk-a wrote: post #130
SamReidHughes wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

National security reasons if you're a government or contractor, and likewise financial security reasons if you're a corporation.

The former is valid, the latter I disagree with strongly. Specifically... Too bad. There are costs and risks in employment and employees are exposed to lots of risks that can result in health issues, sudden termination (layoff) and a myriad of other problems, the slight risk an employer accepts when hiring new employees and investing in training absolutely can be offset by insurance (employers can get targeted insura…

Well, I'm all for saying it should be none of your business (in the general case) after considering that there are reasons that contribute to the case that it might be, and dismissing them. But insurance is a weak argument. Ultimately that means people fit for employment pay for others' incompetence and malfeasance.

Re: Facebook Accused by HUD of Housing Bias Over Use of Targeted Ads

#147

Post by munk-a »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #146
munk-a wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The former is valid, the latter I disagree with strongly. Specifically... Too bad. There are costs and risks in employment and employees are exposed to lots of risks that can result in health issues, sudden termination (layoff) and a myriad of other problems, the slight risk an employer accepts when hiring new employees and investing in training absolutely can be offset by insurance (employers can get targeted insura…

Well, I'm all for saying it should be none of your business (in the general case) after considering that there are reasons that contribute to the case that it might be, and dismissing them. But insurance is a weak argument. Ultimately that means people fit for employment pay for others' incompetence and malfeasance.

I mean, this is a thing that happens. The malfeasance is pretty indefensible, but if you start talking about the employ-ability (or lack thereof) of people judged "incompetent" then we're going to start walking down a really dark path. It'd be nice if everyone was the perfect employee but some people have short tempers and some people are a bit less efficient than others - should these people (if they enjoy and are trained in software development) be unable to find employment because they fall short of a standard?

If so, how should they support themselves? Is it right and just to relegate everyone you judge incompetent (due to training or innate ability) as ineligible to work? There are obviously extremes here that we, as a society, accept - but if we raise that bar and make it more precise with big data some really scary social effects will come out of the woodwork.

Personally, I'm in the camp that we need to shift the morality and realism of working so that everyone has the safety net of a UBI to fallback on in desperate times because I am reading the tea leaves and fewer and fewer people have more and more control of the economy.

Re: Facebook Accused by HUD of Housing Bias Over Use of Targeted Ads

#148

Post by SamReidHughes »

munk-a wrote: post #147
SamReidHughes wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I'm all for saying it should be none of your business (in the general case) after considering that there are reasons that contribute to the case that it might be, and dismissing them. But insurance is a weak argument. Ultimately that means people fit for employment pay for others' incompetence and malfeasance.

I mean, this is a thing that happens. The malfeasance is pretty indefensible, but if you start talking about the employ-ability (or lack thereof) of people judged "incompetent" then we're going to start walking down a really dark path. It'd be nice if everyone was the perfect employee but some people have short tempers and some people are a bit less efficient than others - should these people (if they enjoy and are t…

It is right that people judged incompetent are free to work for anybody that wants to pay them or judge them differently. They might just want to get their gambling debts in order before being CFO or holding the keys to Gmail.

Edit: Also, the more you know about candidates, the less risky it is to hire them. This generally makes it easier for people to get jobs.

Re: Facebook Accused by HUD of Housing Bias Over Use of Targeted Ads

#149

Post by voldacar »

CompelTechnic wrote: post #111

I agree that facebook's advertising practices allowed for illegal discrimination. A good case of "move fast and break things." Some journalists go farther though, and suggest that even the concept of a credit score is racist. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/oct/13/your-c... Consider the 2 possible worlds: 1. One in which disadvantaged minorities have poor credit because of their poor socioeconomic stat…

>>The insidious notion that our credit history speaks to our reliability as human beings is largely taken for granted.

That's literally what a credit score is. A record of (financial) reliability.

What an article

Re: Facebook Accused by HUD of Housing Bias Over Use of Targeted Ads

#150

Post by notyourday »

kyrra wrote: post #77
randyrand wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did Facebook cause this to be made? The wording implies that it's meant to address the administrators that demanded such an ad be made. The ones who decided to make it. Who caused it to be made. Facebook is just the hardware store in this sense. They provide tools. And you make the billboard. They did not cause this to be made. edit: They still may be responsible for publishing it, which is illegal. I would think…

It's really an argument of platform vs publisher. Google, Facebook, and others have been treated as platforms (it's really what the DMCA protected). But as they have been grown larger, governments want to treat them more like publishers and hold them accountable for the content that they put on their site (treating them more like publishers).

It seems to me that Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc all want to be treated like a publisher -- they keep making publisher like decisions on who can and who cannot use their platform in whatever way that they decide.

Sort of like CBS or Fox can and do decide what kind of ads they would or they would not air.

I think Facebook/Google/Twitter/etc are going to find out that by being a publisher one has to actually act as a publisher all the time and not just when it is convenient.

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