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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

#131

Post by mikec3010 »

EB66 wrote: post #46
dev_dull wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m sure their counsel knows exactly what they’re doing. Sometimes when you’re big and bad enough it’s worth it to take a gamble and see how things will settle in court. And that’s not even necessarily a bad thing. People and cultures change and so should our regulation and laws.

> And that’s not even necessarily a bad thing. ...what? Are you suggesting it's a good thing that we bring back red lining and other discriminatory practices?

If you dont show someone an ad, that's not discrimination. It's just not advertising to a group of people.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#132

Post by quotemstr »

maym86 wrote: post #124
quotemstr wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of really bad policy gets enacted because advocates don't honestly ask themselves, "What are the foreseeable consequences of the policy I'm advocating?" That is, a failure to ask the question "And then what?" results in a lot of unnecessary misery. Your comment essentially restates the HUD's complaint. It doesn't engage with my discussion of the fundamental incompatibility of the HUD's regulatory regime and ad…

My point was your premise is making up imaginary scenarios that aren't actually happening as a way of creating an issue with the clear problems outlined and this isn't helpful. Creating an imaginary general problem as a way of attacking the specific issue is disingenuous.

> disingenuous

By accusing the other side of arguing in bad faith instead of engaging with the other side's central, you concede the argument.

Yes, I'm discussing a hypothetical. But it's one that logically follows from the concrete case under discussion, not something I made up out of thin air.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#133

Post by [deleted] »

AdamM12 wrote: post #127
Maybestring wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should. Allowing large commercial entities to facilitilate discrimination and only going after individual landlords would be an extremely inefficient use of limited resources.

The inefficiency of the process shouldn't be a deciding factor. Should be the justness of it. Facebook isn't discriminating. We don't punish shipping companies when their resources are used for drug smuggling. We punish the individuals involved in the illicit act. edit: Not entirely sure how arguing that our system should be a just one more so than one that goes after what is easiest is getting down voted so much but…

[deleted]

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#134

Post by MBCook »

dnautics wrote: post #126
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…

Of course Facebook should allow racial filtering. Not understanding this is a fundamental failure to understand minority businesses. Let's say hypothetically you're selling a product that is highly ethnically selected, like beauty products (before any criticism keep in mind that the first self made American female millionaire, cj walker made her fortune on beauty products) - should you be forced to buy advertising im…

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.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#135

Post by rland »

emilfihlman wrote: post #128
maratd wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What exactly is your argument? That if there's a bad law on the books, we shouldn't have laws?

Or perhaps that if the law is bad, we should engage in civil disobedience.

Giant multinational corporations are squarely last in the "queue of parties that ought to commit civil disobedience."

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#136

Post by quotemstr »

maratd wrote: post #109
perl4ever wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's a start. They weren't even doing that.

Your use of the phrase "it's a start" suggests that further restrictions will follow.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#137

Post by mikec3010 »

AdamM12 wrote: post #122
jjeaff wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't a law on the books prohibiting hardware stores from selling knives. There is a law on the books prohibiting publishers from publishing descriminitory ads, even if they didn't write them. That's the difference.

The difference is that the law shouldn't even be on the books imo. The person discriminating is the private property owner/manager they engaged in the advertising. Facebook did not.

We live in the Ninny Age where our government protectors have to protect the Sacred Minority. Right dang? It's illegal to think otherwise.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#138

Post by sincerely »

quotemstr wrote: post #117
sincerely wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, which suggests to me that something changes when you cross from print advertising to digital advertising, but I'm not sure what.

Is it wrong to publish an ad on the Wall Street Journal website and not run the same ad on the Teen Vogue website ?

Is that something that actually happens? Do people say "let's run this ad on teenvogue.com"? Don't websites (especially businesses of the scale of WSJ/vogue/etc) get their ads from ad networks?

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#139

Post by reaperducer »

yardie wrote: post #26

How did they not see this coming. Are they not familiar with another dotcom called Craigslist who had to deal with this very same regulation years ago. Their counsel either wasn't aware of what FB marketplace was doing or didn't know about FHA laws. > draw a red line around zip codes and then not display ads to Facebook users who live in specific zip codes. This alone is really damn damning. I'm going to go out on a…

How did they not see this coming. Are they not familiar with another dotcom called Craigslist who had to deal with this very same regulation years ago.

I guess "move fast and break things" applies both to code and the law.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#140

Post by ABCLAW »

xphilter wrote: post #107
vilhelm_s wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "red line" wording is from the HUD press release. I don't think there is any red line in the Facebook UI, you input a list of zip codes. ( https://www.facebook.com/business/help/community/question/?i... )

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.

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