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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

#21

Post by RightMillennial »

burkaman wrote: post #14
RightMillennial wrote: post #9

> The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in housing transactions including print and online advertisement on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, or familial status. Emphasis mine. If the FHA does indeed prohibit online advertisement discriminating on those criteria, this sounds pretty damning to Facebook. Those are some of the key features of Facebook ads.

https://www.justice.gov/crt/fair-housing-act-2 Sec. 804 (c): > To make, print, or publish, or cause to be made, printed, or published any notice, statement, or advertisement, with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limita…

I just found that same page. The heading to that section is:

> Sec. 804. [42 U.S.C. 3604] Discrimination in sale or rental of housing and other prohibited practices

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#22

Post by dominotw »

sincerely wrote: post #18
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.

On the other hand, this doesn't seem like an issue of algorithms at all.

I was reading the list you edited out and I was like "yeah I don't want to live next to any of those", I wish there was app for doing the reverse about your neighbors before you rent a place. Then I felt bad for thinking that thought.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#23

Post by [deleted] »

koboll wrote: post #16
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.

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.

[deleted]

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#24

Post by dominotw »

beager wrote: post #12

It would seem fairly straightforward for Facebook to collect information about whether an advertisement pertains to something that has anti-discriminatory regulations tied to it (housing, employment). I generally agree that FB should not be allowed to permit users to segment these types of advertisements by the dimensions claimed. However, what piques my curiosity here is whether “indirect” discrimination in choice o…

What about housing ad posted only in places like whole foods or a particular newspaper. I know my previous landlady did this.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#25

Post by google_censors »

beager wrote: post #12

It would seem fairly straightforward for Facebook to collect information about whether an advertisement pertains to something that has anti-discriminatory regulations tied to it (housing, employment). I generally agree that FB should not be allowed to permit users to segment these types of advertisements by the dimensions claimed. However, what piques my curiosity here is whether “indirect” discrimination in choice o…

There's actually something called "disparate impact" in Fair Housing that covers this. So if someone does something like that, especially intentionally, and it impacts a protected class, they can be sued and fined.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#26

Post by yardie »

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 limb and say their counsel is really young and didn't know this was a problem. There is a lot of history in that sentence alone.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#27

Post by [deleted] »

0x00000000 wrote: post #6

>and/or zip code. >effectively limit housing options for these protected classes I have head of zip code being protected or personally identifiable information but never a protected class Also fun fact, "age" as a protected class in the US only refers to discrimination against people over the age of 40.

[deleted]

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#28

Post by astura »

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.

This is a very easy thing to avoid though:

if (ad target == anything to do with housing) {disable options to exclude ethnic affinity [and a bunch of other things]}

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#30

Post by ghaff »

dominotw wrote: post #24
beager wrote: post #12

It would seem fairly straightforward for Facebook to collect information about whether an advertisement pertains to something that has anti-discriminatory regulations tied to it (housing, employment). I generally agree that FB should not be allowed to permit users to segment these types of advertisements by the dimensions claimed. However, what piques my curiosity here is whether “indirect” discrimination in choice o…

What about housing ad posted only in places like whole foods or a particular newspaper. I know my previous landlady did this.

In practice, for better or worse, a lot of things escape notice when done obliquely at small scale.
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