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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

#541

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #463
fjsolwmv wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not obvious to me. If I photocopy an ilegal ad at Kinko's, is it Kinko's fault? If I send an illegal ad via first class mail, is it USPS's fault?

Sometimes. They sold it to you. Example: I worked at a pharmacy with the self-serve digital photo services. A customer brought in a CD and made christmas cards from a family picture. It turns out the picture was taken by a local photographer the customer had hired. The pharmacy I worked at got the legal notice. Supposedly, we were partly to blame since we profited off of the cards the customer printed. Nevermind the…

If you get photos printed at Walmart (or at least when I tried a few years ago) they make you either sign an indemnification agreement or refuse to print the photos. I remember one issue in particular - my wife had purchased some logos/prints online from someone on Etsy for a friend's baby shower. They still had the watermark on them and Walmart refused to print them without a signed release from the original artist.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#542

Post by 4ad »

joelhaasnoot wrote: post #35
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #29

From an ethics point of view, why is this illegal?

This creates ghettos

This law was created in 1968 IIRC. Ghettos still exist today, in 2018, 50 years laters. It seems to me the law is not doing anything.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#543

Post by vt_throwaway123 »

samfisher83 wrote: post #49

These are the specific points they are going after: -display housing ads either only to men or women; -not show ads to Facebook users interested in an "assistance dog," "mobility scooter," "accessibility" or "deaf culture"; -not show ads to users whom Facebook categorizes as interested in "child care" or "parenting," or show ads only to users with children above a specified age; -to display/not display ads to users w…

IANAL but it seems both from the comments here and common sense that the law only makes ad publishers liable for discriminatory ads, not advertising campaigns that target in a discriminatory way while advertisers are liable for both. Making publishers liable for the latter is also problematic and likely unprecedented because typically publishers do not have this information. Any given publisher only receives some portion of the entire advertising budget for the campaign and cannot possibly know how the rest of the budget is spent and whether the full campaign adds up to being discriminatory.

For example, if you own a newspaper that caters to people of a specific national origin, are you not allowed to accept any housing ads? By definition, any ad placement on that newspaper is discriminatory in terms of targeting - without knowing the full details of the campaign, they cannot verify that the overall targeting is not discriminatory. This means that any law that makes publishers liable must be restricted to the content of the ads and any law that goes after the demographic targeting likely limits liability to the entity - the advertiser or perhaps agencies - who have full control and knowledge of the targeting in question.

Does this make sense?

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#544

Post by tekromancr »

bumholio wrote: post #461
tekromancr wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The geotargeting polygon was literally RED!?! I can believe that being an oversight, but holy Shit those optics... yikes

Redlining does not mean simply drawing red polygons on the map. To be guilty of redlining, Facebook must have known the ethnic/racial/religious composition of the excluded areas and it must have known that the advertisers were using the tools for discrimination. Quite a tall order.

This case hinges on three facts. First, displaying housing ads that exclude protected classes is illegal. Second is that Facebook built tools that allowed advertisers to create said illegal ads. Finally, Facebook had no oversight process to reject potentially illegal ads. The fact that Facebook created tools that allowed advertisers to effectively cause Facebook to break the law in an automated fashion isn't really much of a defense.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#545

Post by rfugger »

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.

Like links in a chain, they are all required for the chain to hold.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#546

Post by mindslight »

dang wrote: post #539
mindslight wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very odd that detracting from a two minute hate gets labeled as the flamewar. I get that if everybody commenting is in agreement, then there is no "war". It's just utterly anti-intellectual, and I thought HN was above that.

You didn't detract from it, you invoked it. That's the problem with flamey rhetoric.

The problem with tone policing is that it encourages groupthink, because deviating from consensus assumptions is intrinsically aggressive (no matter how well-couched) while extremely-low-effort agreeable comments pass right through the radar.

I understand if the point is simply to keep threads from devolving into sequences of "no yuo", but I did substantiate my call-out with the larger meta-intellectual point being brushed aside. What makes this story "interesting" is the editorialization of services that have traditionally been viewed as conduits, not because it's a place to pile on anti-discrimination piety.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#547

Post by rocqua »

nv-vn wrote: post #113
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?

My argument is just that not all laws are good, and following the law does not equate to doing the right thing.

Whilst that is totally correct morally, law enforcement must be very careful about applying that. There is a trade-off between having a stable and predictable set of laws (i.e. strict enforcement) and having room for judgement calls when the letter of the law is unfair (i.e. discretion in enforcement).

I understand when regulators decide to side with strict enforcement when a companies only advantage comes from not following the rules. Especially when it is disputed the rules shouldn't be there.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#548

Post by rocqua »

sorokod wrote: post #489
hw wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies operating on Google scale should also have the scale to ensure that their ad platform doesn't enable people to target ads discriminately, especially when it's on something like housing where there are laws against that. They're probably more worried about their quarterly results and shareholders than they are about potential problems until it becomes a big problem.

Right, except what does scale had to do with anything? The law is there regardless of the scale.

Scale is what gives these companies some cover from "not having human review". Not having human review is what made the scale possible.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#549

Post by rocqua »

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.

Have heavy fines in the TOS (communicated upfront) about illegal adds. This gives FB an incentive to police themselves, and lets the bad-actors pay for the enforcement.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#550

Post by dang »

mindslight wrote: post #546
dang wrote: post #539

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't detract from it, you invoked it. That's the problem with flamey rhetoric.

The problem with tone policing is that it encourages groupthink, because deviating from consensus assumptions is intrinsically aggressive (no matter how well-couched) while extremely-low-effort agreeable comments pass right through the radar. I understand if the point is simply to keep threads from devolving into sequences of "no yuo", but I did substantiate my call-out with the larger meta-intellectual point being b…

That argument doesn't hold up empirically. Plenty of HN users are able to disagree substantively without resorting to ranty rhetoric like you did in your last paragraph, and the disagreements are better for it.

Lofty descriptions of nobly pursuing truth ("deviating from consensus assumptions") against the groupthinking mob (everybody else!) are mostly self-flattery. People don't post ranty rhetoric because we want to strengthen diversity of opinion or anything like that. We do it because it feels good to vent. The problem is that others take it as a license to vent further, and by the time that process converges, it's all in flames. Flamewar is the ultimate groupthink, by the way; despite what the war parties say, it's always the same.

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