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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

#61

Post by modells »

0) Not to justify but to give a similar example: CL rarely takes (or took in the past) down zillions of postings that are/were blatantly illegal, i.e., “Seeking roommate: female ONLY.”

1) People are going to discriminate, even if it’s illegal. Heck, I was at a restaurant and an Israeli couple were smugly grinning about how they were discriminating against a candidate whom was “male and too old” by wasting his time and not calling them back. It sucks, but you can’t legislate not being an asshat, even with ostensibly anti-asshat laws.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#62

Post by astura »

perl4ever wrote: post #54
astura wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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]}

It's not that easy, because there are many proxies that correlate with protected categories. For instance, take a look at the greater DC area with census data on race. You can easily target regions without explicitly using race.

Compliance.

If they lock down microtargetting for housing related ads and have some code to flag housing ads posted in different categories they become compliant with the law. Nobody says they have to be 100% perfect to be compliment.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#63

Post by jvagner »

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.

last company i worked at we built a PaaS for banks and credit unions that handled mortgage applications.

you wouldn't believe how much time, effort, institutional knowledge, and expertise we applied to regulatory auditing, reporting requirements, and fraud detection per federal guidelines.

we were less than 80 employees total.

hardly a burden for the likes of google.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#65

Post by perl4ever »

astura wrote: post #62
perl4ever wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that easy, because there are many proxies that correlate with protected categories. For instance, take a look at the greater DC area with census data on race. You can easily target regions without explicitly using race.

Compliance. If they lock down microtargetting for housing related ads and have some code to flag housing ads posted in different categories they become compliant with the law. Nobody says they have to be 100% perfect to be compliment.

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

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#66

Post by austincheney »

briandear wrote: post #45
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…

My question would be if an advertiser advertised housing in a demographically targeted publication, for example, a publication focused only on single gay men, if that would necessarily function as discrimination since single mothers wouldn’t be reading that publication, nor those ads. Facebook allows demographic targeting that just happens to be more “effective,” but no more discriminatory that the way conventional t…

I find those to be distinctly different qualities even if the end result is similar. The distinguishing factor is: Who is performing the discrimination?

In one example the discrimination is deliberately performed by an ad supplier. In the other example the discrimination is performed by the audience of the offline publication. I come to this conclusion because it is the audience that is choosing which demographically targeted publications to purchase or read. People cannot legally discriminate against themselves.

That distinction is also a paradox for Facebook. You cannot be a supplier to everybody and simultaneously to a targeted individual as chosen by individual's inputs. Facebook tries to have both sides of a coin by allowing users maximum flexibility in content preferences and also provide that power to ad suppliers to use for precision targeting.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#67

Post by astura »

modells wrote: post #61

0) Not to justify but to give a similar example: CL rarely takes (or took in the past) down zillions of postings that are/were blatantly illegal, i.e., “Seeking roommate: female ONLY.” 1) People are going to discriminate, even if it’s illegal. Heck, I was at a restaurant and an Israeli couple were smugly grinning about how they were discriminating against a candidate whom was “male and too old” by wasting his time an…

Craigslist doesn't take down "Seeking roommate: female ONLY" because those ads are not illegal.

https://www.craigslist.org/about/FHA

>Federal Fair Housing laws prohibit discriminatory advertising in all housing, regardless of how large or small the property. However, as discussed below, advertising which expresses a preference based upon sex is allowed in shared living situations where tenants will share a bathroom, kitchen, or other common area.

>Shared Housing Exemption -- If you are advertising a shared housing unit, in which tenants will be sharing a bathroom, kitchen, or other common area, you may express a preference based upon sex only.

I HAVE seen Craigslist take down apartment ads that list religious preferences.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#68

Post by AdamM12 »

Karishma1234 wrote: post #56

Essentially an archaic organisation using an archaic law against a modern ad delivery platform. What a travesty.

Regulator land grab imo. FHA is intended to regulate the owners of real estate. HUD shouldn't be in the advertising regulation business.

Re: HUD Files Housing Discrimination Complaint Against Facebook

#70

Post by ghaff »

austincheney wrote: post #66
briandear wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My question would be if an advertiser advertised housing in a demographically targeted publication, for example, a publication focused only on single gay men, if that would necessarily function as discrimination since single mothers wouldn’t be reading that publication, nor those ads. Facebook allows demographic targeting that just happens to be more “effective,” but no more discriminatory that the way conventional t…

I find those to be distinctly different qualities even if the end result is similar. The distinguishing factor is: Who is performing the discrimination? In one example the discrimination is deliberately performed by an ad supplier. In the other example the discrimination is performed by the audience of the offline publication. I come to this conclusion because it is the audience that is choosing which demographically…

I also assume that the further you get from overt discrimination based on a protected class the less issue you’re likely to run into. After all, ads on sites or magazines have to be selectively run and each site or magazine has some demographic.

Added: HUD lists some advertising practices that it prohibits but obviously the smaller the scale and the grayer the intent, the less likely a complaint.

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