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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

#561

Post by bonzini »

pests wrote: post #526
bonzini wrote: post #511

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see it as fair. I am not American so I am not familiar with the law. The other comment that replied to me explained why it's also illegal, without accusing anyone of racism. I still don't believe that merely providing the option to create potentially discriminatory ads is a problem for Facebook, since the same options have perfectly valid usage. It should be the landlord's responsibility to use them correctly…

Why not disable them when it's invalid usage then? Who did I accuse of racism? I stated people in the thread are being casually racist but didn't name any names. Haven't we been learning as developers or operators that it's better to put processes and systems in place to prevent human error opposed to relying on human judgement alone? Why the slack with this issue?

How would you detect invalid usage? For example, targeting different text or pictures at different segments should be okay even for housing ads, as long as you don't exclude any segment.

Would you also require natural language processing to detect illegal text?

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#562

Post by int_19h »

Retric wrote: post #502
roel_v wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well just the last week, the Dutch highest administrative court ruled that Pastafarianism is not a real religion. Do you at least see why (you don't have to agree, just understand)?

I can understand the reasoning. However, that ruling does not apply to the US. It’s something of a cultural identity issue in the US. Mocking religious beliefs in the abstract is often acceptable, but mocking specific people is far less so.

Like I said, there have been similar court rulings in US. Look up Stephen Cavanaugh for one example.

So, yes, it does apply in US as well - you have freedom of religion, but it has to be an "actual religion", whatever that means. Things might have been different if the Constitution just spoke of freedom of consciousness or some such; but we have what we have.

This, by the way, is one of the reason why the Satanic Temple has been a lot more successful with its lawsuits so far (e.g. https://religiousreproductiverights.com/lawsuit-status/lawsu... - but also numerous cases where a mere threat of a lawsuit causes the local government to change its tune) - because it tries to present itself in a way that makes it clear that trolling isn't the only thing it is about.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#563

Post by Broken_Hippo »

SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #541
Broken_Hippo wrote: post #463

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's common on the software from the companies producing the machines (we had it too), and isn't quite enough.

It is pretty ridiculous in these cases, honestly. This particular picture didn't have a "photographer's studio" setup - it was an outdoor picture with the family around a long, metal farm gate and the photographer sold the customer the CD. There wasn't much the store could do to prevent this, and we had to start physically checking a lot of pictures at that store.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#564

Post by Retric »

int_19h wrote: post #562
Retric wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand the reasoning. However, that ruling does not apply to the US. It’s something of a cultural identity issue in the US. Mocking religious beliefs in the abstract is often acceptable, but mocking specific people is far less so.

Like I said, there have been similar court rulings in US. Look up Stephen Cavanaugh for one example. So, yes, it does apply in US as well - you have freedom of religion, but it has to be an "actual religion", whatever that means. Things might have been different if the Constitution just spoke of freedom of consciousness or some such; but we have what we have. This, by the way, is one of the reason why the Satanic Tem…

There is plenty of nuance here. Washington County, Minnesota is an example of backing down vs FSM.

Really, Cavanaugh's seeking 5 million and an exemption from various prison rules put the issue in different light than officiating marriages.

Which is why the generalizing rulings is tricky and you need to keep jurisdiction in mind.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#565

Post by bonzini »

pests wrote: post #520
vsl wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give me a break. Not everybody that disagrees with you is a racist. Landlord that prefer to not have couples with children aren’t racist. I too am confused how targeting may be illegal under a law that forbids discrimination and discriminating content of ads - I am not familiar with the law. Lack of knowledge/understanding doesn’t make me “racist”. Some other comments in this inflammatory thread helped me get the poi…

Not by default. After posting a comment supportive of denying the possibility of buying a house based on race and then making up rationalizations for why it's okay. Do you really believe in all of the hundreds of comments from various commentors that not one person here could actually really really in fact be racist? Thinking about it, people who disagree with me by thinking that it is okay to deny housing based on r…

Most people are stating that the responsibility lies within the landlords and not Facebook. There is no disagreement the landlords are being racist.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#566

Post by tekromancr »

downandout wrote: post #559
roel_v wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 certai…

Because zip codes can, in many cases for many historical reasons, strongly correlate with brown and black folks, which are legally protected classes.

As much as you might think you are being clever by just saying "Oh, I'm just excluding AREAS, not people" you are still running afoul of the law since you are effectively using zip codes as a proxy for race. This has been tried before and the courts aren't really fooled by it.

So, no, there is nothing inherently wrong with excluding certain areas from seeing your ad, unless you are using the area exclusion mechanism as a proxy for excluding based on race/sexuality/religion or some other protected status.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#567

Post by downandout »

tekromancr wrote: post #566
downandout wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 certai…

Because zip codes can, in many cases for many historical reasons, strongly correlate with brown and black folks, which are legally protected classes. As much as you might think you are being clever by just saying "Oh, I'm just excluding AREAS, not people" you are still running afoul of the law since you are effectively using zip codes as a proxy for race. This has been tried before and the courts aren't really fooled…

you are still running afoul of the law

The point is that you are not necessarily running afoul of the law by excluding zip codes in the absence of other evidence that you intended to discriminate. Excluding poor neighborhoods from seeing a $10 million home listing is common sense, not discrimination.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#568

Post by quadrangle »

quotemstr wrote: post #120
quadrangle wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our legal system will not hold Facebook liable for a case like that. Should?? Like how things ought to be with the world? Facebook shouldn't even know who prefers organic food. There should be nothing tying that preference to any other aspect of people's lives. Facebook should be more like Reddit where people can have whatever accounts they want and can interact on organic food topics without identifying themselves o…

> Our legal system will not hold Facebook liable for a case like that. I have to disagree with you on that. I'd put money on targeting a housing advertisement toward someone with a preference for organic food to be ruled discriminatory within five years. It's an unavoidable logical consequence of the logic driving today's complaint.

I don't buy your argument in the slightest. Slippery slopes exist, but the whole point legally is to NOT allow us to go down such slopes. The law defines the (fuzzy) lines. Once it seems to be slipping down a slope, there will be a point where the law (judges) will stop slipping.

If there's an organic restaurant or grocer in a neighborhood, it makes sense to market to those who prefer organic food. There's nothing stopping anyone of any race or background from preferring organic food other than price or education/awareness etc.

Short of laws that ban targeted advertising in general, there will never be a law saying that you can't target people with some consumer preference.

If you tried to avoid black folks by not showing an ad to people who like stereotypical black consumer products, you'd be more likely to get away with it. There would be some burden of proof that you were doing this as a proxy for the protected class.

The core point is that our laws are more likely to have effective loopholes that undermine the actual intention than to have slippery slopes that take the intention and go way too far with it.

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