Facebook Still Lets Housing Advertisers Exclude Users By Race (arstechnica.com) 197
AmiMoJo writes: In February, Facebook said it would step up enforcement of its prohibition against discrimination in advertising for housing, employment, or credit. Last week, ProPublica bought dozens of rental housing ads on Facebook but asked that they not be shown to certain categories of users, such as African-Americans,mothers of high school kids, people interested in wheelchair ramps, Jews, expats from Argentina, and Spanish speakers. All of these groups are protected under the federal Fair Housing Act. Violators can face tens of thousands of dollars in fines. Every single ad was approved within minutes. The only ad that took longer than three minutes to be approved by Facebook sought to exclude potential renters 'interested in Islam, Sunni Islam, and Shia Islam.' It was approved after 22 minutes.
Jeebuz! (Score:1)
Is Zuckerborg from Mississippi or something?
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Because it's advertising, not commerce. You can advertise your commercials only during the whitest TV show, why would the Internet be different?
Re:Jeebuz! (Score:5, Informative)
The Fair Housing act begs to differ: https://www.hud.gov/sites/docu... [hud.gov]
Folks can debate whether it should or should not be a law all they want, but the issue of legality is pretty clear.
The Act very clearly covers advertising as well in section 109.5
109.5 Policy.
It is the policy of the United States to provide, within constitutional limitations, for fair housing
throughout the United States. The provisions of the Fair Housing Act (42 U.S.C. 3600, et seq.)
make it unlawful to discriminate in the sale, rental, and financing of housing, and in the provision
of brokerage and appraisal services, because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status,
or national origin. Section 804(c) of the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3604(c), as amended, makes
it unlawful 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 because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial
status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.
However, the prohibitions of the act regarding familial status do not apply with respect to housing
for older persons, as defined in section 807(b) of the act.
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It very clearly covers the contents of that advertising. The contents should not indicate the preference - but if the targeting is information that is not available to the consumer it is not a violation.
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Read the whole thing:
makes it unlawful 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,
'Cause to be made' and 'indicates any preference' are pretty clear. It's settled law.
You can discriminate all you want as long as you don't voice intent, ie you just quietly don't rent to somebody or advertise on 'Duck Dynasty' but if you tell the advertiser: don't show my commerc
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Reading comprehension:
that indicates any preference
Sure, maybe a TV ad might not be compliant. But a Facebook ad where the targeting is completely opaque does not give anyone a way to determine an indication of preference.
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And if those certain groups can't see the indication of preference when they see the placement of the ad, the letter of the law still holds.
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I guess you ran out of actual arguments, then. They don't see the advertisement and they don't see it being advertised publicly to other groups of people (targeted advertising is relatively private). And you can only guess if race was the demographic that made the ad show or not show.
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The advertisers made a statement that they wanted to discriminate. That's clearly a violation of the regulation. There's no requirement for the statement to be made to potential customers; making a statement to your advertiser is clearly covered. You could say to your wife "I don't want to rent our place out to any blacks" and that would be a violation too.
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The law only covers the contents of advertising that "indicates preference." If a customer can readily determine that there was a preference, that's the same as it being in the contents of the ad.
making a statement to your advertiser is clearly covered
Nothing about the words in the law says this.
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The law says "To make, print, or publish, or cause to be made, printed, or published any notice, statement, or advertisement". It doesn't just say "publish", it also says "make". It doesn't just say "advertisement" it also says "statement". So if I "make" a "statement" then that is covered by this law.
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And if Facebook is offended by those statements, then they can sue. They would be the only valid claimant, since that is who they are making the statement to.
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And if Facebook is offended by those statements, then they can sue. They would be the only valid claimant, since that is who they are making the statement to.
Just like, if you murder me, I'm the only one who can sue you for murder.
Or, maybe, the government has some kind of enforcement apparatus which will go after you. Maybe there's even a difference between civil and criminal law.
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Maybe there's even a difference between civil and criminal law.
You're right. And this one is civil law.
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Which doesn't affect the ability of state and federal agencies, e.g., HUD, to penalise landlords in cases like this one. Even advocacy organisations like ProPublica can have standing to do this.
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Just because the ad itself doesn't say "no blacks" is not enough. The advertisers said "no blacks" to Facebook and that's a "statement" that they "made" and so *is* a violation.
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Read the whole thing:
makes it unlawful 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,
'Cause to be made' and 'indicates any preference' are pretty clear. It's settled law.
You can discriminate all you want as long as you don't voice intent, ie you just quietly don't rent to somebody or advertise on 'Duck Dynasty' but if you tell the advertiser: don't show my commercial where black people might see it you have signaled intent and are not in compliance.
Well what do you propose? That we force facebook to remove targeted ads?
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It very clearly covers the contents of that advertising.
... and even then, it is the person placing the ad that is breaking the law, not the newspaper or website publishing it.
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As others have pointed out, this deals with the content of the ad, not the placement of the ad.
Further, this is all "within constitutional limitations". You can't compel speech by forcing someone to place an ad in specific publications, locations, etc.
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"Because it's advertising, not commerce."
Did money exchange hands? It's commerce no matter how you try to camouflage it.
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But not between you and the end consumer. Way to pedantically nitpick the leaves and miss the trees and forest entirely.
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I'm not missing shit, son. I READ THE FUCKING RELEVANT LAW. You apparently did not.
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Reading may imply comprehension, but you prove that it does not mean comprehension.
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Apparently you failed, too.
"Section 804(c) of the Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. 3604(c), as amended, makes
it unlawful 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 because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial
status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination."
To wit: Here' [cornell.edu]
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I suspect the financial sense thing is the reason for this policy at Facebook. They can force people to spend more advertising dollars that will be less effective all in the name of equality.
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How is this even legal?
Is Zuckerborg from Mississippi or something?
I'm guessing the religion one might be legal - I'm pretty certain you can discriminate on the basis of religious beliefs.
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I'm pretty certain you can discriminate on the basis of religious beliefs.
No. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 specifically prohibits discrimination in housing based on religion.
There is an exemption for housing administered by religious organizations.
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I really hope you're kidding or being sarcastic.
Neither. I honestly did not know which is why I said "I'm guessing" and "I'm pretty certain", instead of "I know" or "I'm certain". Poster elsethread posted a reference for the religion/housing thing.
The federally protected classes in the U.S. are, race, color, religion or creed, national origin or ancestry, sex, age, physical or mental disability, veteran status, genetic information, and citizenship.
States may ADD to that list, but they cannot remove anything from that list.
I'd like to see a reference for this. I don't see how "national origin" or "genetic information" can be protected classes.
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He was talking about excluding non citizens from visiting the US. Non citizens have no right to enter the US, and the POTUS has a right to exclude them.
http://www.nationalreview.com/... [nationalreview.com]
[...]
The National Review [wikipedia.org] is great at cheerleading Trump, but it is not a qualified or reliable source for legal questions.
Only one of them makes sense (in some situations) (Score:1)
If you are renting a 3rd floor apartment in a building without an elevator, then people interested in wheelchair ramps probably also aren't interested in your apartment.
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In Great Society 2.0, governrment rewards law firms that find violations in small businesses. This is why you may have seen two railings on stairs, because the original one was a few inches too high or low, and a law firm found it and made the business pay them $11,947 as a violation finders' reward.
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Not to mention ADA. If you operate at a big enough scale, you have a legal obligation to make your properties handicapped accessible, when feasible.
FB Trolling (Score:2, Informative)
Facebook "advertisers" trolling has only increased since the last election IMO. A friend of mine shared recently an ad that was injected into his newsfeed (from some site called Wish) that was essentially a picture of a small ziploc back filled with white powder, and a large straw. WTF? I've also seen "ads" that appear to be simply there to disturb people playing to their paranoias and delusions. Facebook has no mechanism for reporting abuse of the advertisements. I suppose the line between "fucking so
On break for lunch? (Score:5, Funny)
The only ad that took longer than three minutes to be approved by Facebook sought to exclude potential renters 'interested in Islam, Sunni Islam, and Shia Islam.' It was approved after 22 minutes.
The reviewer was on break for lunch?
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Fair Housing Act (Score:3)
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No, I would argue that landlords configuring their ads to match the values are the violating the act.
The act says "landlords" not advertisers acting on behalf of landlords.
Check the rental ads on Craigslist or other platforms and you'll find most ads are in violation of the fair housing act.
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A landlord must treat every tenant equally.
There is no legal requirement that every tenant be treated equally. The laws bans certain forms of discrimination based on a specific list of criteria. If you want to discriminate on other criteria, such as refusing to rent to people with nose rings, then you can do so.
I would think those two points are pretty clear that Facebook is doing something illegal.
Unlikely. The FHA restricts what landlords can do. It does not restrict what publishers can do. If a landlord places a discriminatory ad in a newspaper, it is the landlord that broke the law, not the newspaper.
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Illegal discrimination occurs when the landlord:
- Includes preferences or limitations in a rental advertisement
- Denies the availability of a available rental dwelling or steers renters to a certain area based on race
Which of the above prohibitions do you think targeted advertising violates, and how?
- The advertisements include no preferences or limitations.
- Not showing someone an ad for a rental is not at all the same thing as denying that a rental is available if they affirmatively ask.
- The advertisements don't tell potential renters to rent from them because of the racial makeup of the neighborhood.
I really don't see how this fits.
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Because the law reads makes it illegal "to make, print, or publish, or cause to be made, printed, or published, any notice, statement, or advertisement". The advertisement itself was fine, but ProPublic "made" a "statement" to Facebook that they wanted to discriminate, so that's illegal.
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I guess since you've moved on to a new topic, you agree there wasn't an issue under OP's criteria. It's like swatting flies sometimes.
I take your quote to be a selective excerpt from 42 U.S.C. 3604(c):
(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, limitation, or discrimination.
Now, considering the full statutory language, how does this situation meet it? The "notice, statement, or advertisement" must itself "indicate[] any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin, or an intention to make any such p
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I'm arguing that ticking the box is a notice or a statement that indicates a preference based on race. You can tick a box that says don't show this ad to black people and that's the problem. You say:
The "notice, statement, or advertisement" must itself "indicate[] any preference, limitation, or discrimination
but I take issue with your use of the word "itself." That's nowhere in the code you cite and, anyway, there are two things going on here. The hypothetical landlord can say "Dear FaceBook: show this ad only to white folks" and provide the ad saying "I'm happy to rent this property to anyone". The advertiseme
Of course they still do it (Score:2)
The fine they would get would be small in comparison to the advertising revenue they're getting, so there's no reason to stop breaking the law.
this bugs me but for a different reason (Score:3)
Likewise, for a roommate situation, the last thing I would want to do is move into a place in which the roomie HATES me from the gitgo. That will make for a nightmare situation
The ability to place that Ad should be similar. If it is roomate or small ownership, then by all means, allow somebody to avoid getting into bad situations.
BUT, with medium to large businesses, absolutely NOT.
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OTOH, if I am a big business, and there are serious issues, esp if I like them both in terms of their work, I will simply shift one of them elsewhere.
So waiit.... what? (Score:2)
It's possible to get Facebook to give someone LESS ads if they can convince Facebook that they are a minority that should be excluded from certain types of ads?
If anything, I'd say that's discriminatory against people who don't fall into a minority category.
So.... how does one get Facebook to think that you are a minority?
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That's actually I good question: How do I get Facebook to think I'm (minority group) so advertisers don't pester me?
Let's look at reality here (Score:2)
What this does is save the potential renter time. Because if some bigot doesn't want to rent his apartment to someone who is (insert person group here) he WILL find an excuse not to. And there is no law that could even possible force anyone to rent a certain apartment to someone specific. This isn't a bar where more than one person at the same time gets in where you can easily point at discrimination when he's turned away while some other person not belonging to the same group get in.
In other words, even if
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Yeah, those blacks, why don't they go to some Ivy League school and become bankers or corporate leaders like the good white collar criminals?
Why is this Facebook's responsibility? (Score:2)
22 minutes (Score:2)
Re:Jews, blacks, and the disabled not welcome (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, if you were to put up physical fliers on telephone poles ONLY in predominately white areas of town, you are not required to put as many (or ANY) of same fliers in areas that are more black/hispanic/minority...right?
It is against the law to discriminate against who you let sign on the dotted line, but you are not compelled to advertise that there is a dotted line available in an equal manner.
Re:Jews, blacks, and the disabled not welcome (Score:5, Interesting)
However, if you're looking to upgrade your rent, and know that flyers are a good way to find those gems, you can mostly drive through the neighborhoods you aspire to live in and find them.
On Facebook, if the ad is not distributed to you for whatever reason, you'll never know.
And that is the difference. A better RL analogy would be to find store owners or others hosting physical bulletin boards shooing away those they deem 'undesirable', rather than letting them see ads for anything they or their posters wish not seen by the 'undesirable'.
And that's plainly illegal. So should it be on Facebook. It's obvious discrimination.
Re:Jews, blacks, and the disabled not welcome (Score:4, Interesting)
It is more like only putting it on bulletin boards in stores that serve potential customers/renters of the demographic you believe to be more suitable for your property (salary, dependability, potential social problems, etc).
In this case of FB...I believe they charge by ad, and how many folks it goes out to...right?
If that's the case, then the customer is wanting to only spend as little advertising $$ and possible, and therefore spend the limited advertising targeted towards those that he feels would be his best potential market.
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Housing is a special case. It's so integral to people's lives, it represents such an important opportunity for them in terms of affecting their quality of life, it gets some special protection. It's also a commonly used tool for creating segregation and deliberate discrimination.
Housing is an area where the market fails. The most profit is made by causing social problems, i.e. to the detriment of the rest of society. As such, most places have extra levels of regulation.
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Housing is an area where the market fails. The most profit is made by causing social problems, i.e. to the detriment of the rest of society. As such, most places have extra levels of regulation.
This explains why housing projects are such great places to live.
The housing market works fine, it's government intervention that screws everything up or makes it way more complicated. You're not going to find many well regarded economists that think rent control is a good idea or doesn't cause all manner of problems in turn. It also turns out that guaranteeing home loans to people who can't possibly afford them wasn't a good idea other. The market did exactly what the people wanted it to, but if you hav
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There are places where segregation wouldn't become a problem if regulation were removed. And then there's the entire southeastern United States, which remains highly segregated and highly bigoted. About 40% of people in Mississippi and Alabama still believe interracial marriage should be illegal -- one of many harmful effects of segregation. Their anti-gay, anti-muslim, etc views are of course even more extreme. The bigots (of any type) can only develop into better people by encountering people who are diff
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But to your analogy, it isn't putting it up on a big public bulletin board and shoo'ing away.
It's like having a bunch of bulletin boards hidden behind curtains, and when somebody walks by you lift a curtain that corresponds to
the bulletin board with ads targeted to that guest's demographics.
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No, you fucking moron.. It's not like that at all. You just made shit up.
Nobody has been "shooed" away, which is the crux of your retarded argument. They were never there to begin with.
The closest analogy to what you want is for an advertiser to be forced to put a flyer on every single telephone pole, instead of telephone poles of their choosing.
This is clearly fucking stupid, and only fools like AmiMojo or yourself can't comprehend it.
Anyone who spends their time worrying about their standing in the protected class Olympics is a fool and probably can't comprehend it. They live their lives with chips on their shoulders and can even look at the absolute poverty in Appalachia and still see "white privilege".
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If the ad said, "No gamers or Republicans", you'd shit on the floor in fury and call for a boycott.
Did U Know? that poverty was going down in Appalachia until they started buying into racist dogwhistles and voting for Republican governan
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Did U Know? that poverty was going down in Appalachia until they started buying into racist dogwhistles and voting for Republican governance? You can look it up.
To be honest I'm not a big D nor R fan, though I dislike them for different reasons. The Democrats favor social engineering and have decided that white people and men are both bad (citation below). As I'm both that isn't appealing to me. Their non-stop race baiting is off-putting. If they decided that they were willing to drop the race baiting and go back to trying to focus on the working poor - upper middle class then I'd be happy to vote for them. The Republicans are a mix of rich for the rich but th
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If the ad said, "No gamers or Republicans", you'd shit on the floor in fury and call for a boycott.
It's funny, really: the ad doesn't say "No Demorats" or "No non-whites" and there is a storm of controversy, and yet you want to turn this around and tell us what the outcome will be if the ad was indeed discriminatory.
You're an idiot.
Common Before Facebook - Post office (Score:2)
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https://www.law.cornell.edu/us... [cornell.edu]
Subsection D says you're dead wrong and in fact you must equally present that dotted line.
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It does regulate content, but it does not regulate the distribution and targeting of the ads or ad campaign.
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I"m guessing that while it is illegal to discriminate with regard to housing to [insert minority here], it is likely NOT illegal to tune your advertising disbursement however you wish.
Where I am, this would be borderline illegal.
But that doesn't matter, its a big PR shitstorm and thatâ(TM)s the damaging part. It doesn't need to be illegal to be immoral or distasteful to your clientele. Many businesses have lost supporters over perfectly legal racist policies because those supporters or advertisers do not want to be tarnished by an affiliated or associated company who has conducted themselves in such a distasteful manner.
Just because it isn't illegal doesn't make it right.
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The medium makes it different. Anybody can read that magazine and see those ads. In Facebook's case, the technology is such that just anybody CANNOT see those ads. You might have a decent argument if the publisher of that magazine had a reliable way of ensuring that young women who wanted to read that magazine were physically obstructed from doing so.
Facebook anonymizes the targeting parameters for advertising, but on the serving end, they're not showing ads when older men are *likely* to be reading, they'r
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In Facebook's case, the technology is such that just anybody CANNOT see those ads.
It seems fairly far-fetched that a seller announces housing available in Facebook Ads only. This is not a conventional way of finding housing..... usually there are listing services that contain such things, and many websites such as Zillow provide a search feature.
Perhaps Facebook could easily address the concern by making ALL ads that are active on their platform searchable, and if you expose an ad by specifical
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"So you can't publish housing ads in a magazine almost exclusively read by older men"
Actually, no mention of age is in the advertising-specific sections of the Fair Housing Act, though it is mentioned elsewhere in non-advertising contexts. That would probably be the sticking point in a court room.
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After all, were that the case, you wouldn't be legally seeing advertisements for age-based retirement communities.
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You're allowed to discriminate based on age when you're discriminating against younger (under-55) people. There's tons of communities in the US where you either can't rent or can't buy a house if you're too young, and it's completely legal.
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Topics read by the user regularly
I.P. location
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The Anonymous Idiot asked why, not how.
He's an idiot because this article is about the "why" -- to better target advertisements.
Re: Jews, blacks, and the disabled not welcome (Score:2)
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Selective advertising can definitely be considered illegal discrimination. It can be hard to prove, but in this case it's pretty easy to demonstrate.
Discrimination in housing was banned by the Fair Housing Act of 1968 [wikipedia.org], which prohibits discriminatory language in ads, but does not specifically prohibit targeted advertising. There may be case law that makes it effectively illegal. It certainly goes on all the time: The Chinese and Vietnamese newspapers in my city (San Jose) have plenty of housing ads written in those languages. But there is nothing in the act that puts the onus on publishers to enforce the law. Facebook may be violating their own stat
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How do you figure?
Citations?
If you look it up, I think you'll actually find that most non-suicide gun deaths are handgun deaths, and these are largely gang related which is generally non-caucasian on non-caucasian crime.
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'white male' does not exclude handicapped, nor Jew, nor Muslim. Close, though.
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Not if contacting the authorities makes them a target, which may explain the 17 minute on average difference in the original article.
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On Facebook profiles, I'm pretty sure it's optional and self-reported. Nobody's forcing them to fill it in.
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When and how has anyone tagged someone as a certain race on FB?
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I guess they should stop making hair and skin products
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There are deep intrinsic cultural differences that are largely apparent within different racial communities.
this is where ya lost me. tying "race" to culture, they are entirely unrelated.
humans, people, on the whole all want/need the same basic stuff. Our cultures can separate us, but we are the same race. a bulldog and a lab, are both dogs. this "race" thing comes about because of the perception that "whitey" is a horse, and "blackey" is a donkey.. and it's bull.
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Saying everyone is the same...is voluntarily blinding yourself to how the real world exists.
And understanding that everyone is different, but still doing your best to treat them equally is the basis of a fair and just society. But that doesn't seem to matter to you - just because people are different seems to make you think that it's OK to discriminate.
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The best I can say about you is you have the courage of your convictions.
I wouldn't want someone like you in my country, though.
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The best I can say about you is you have the courage of your convictions.
I wouldn't want someone like you in my country, though.
Sounds like you're advocating for thought police.
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Whether it is real or not (whatever that means) all should be free.
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FB's SJW ways go out the window when money matters.
Or maybe they just created a social media platform and advertising system and they expect law enforcement to enforce the laws... you know, since enforcing laws is not their business. Should Wal-Mart now also make sure criminals aren't purchasing crowbars?
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Did they say when?
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Care to inform us what the Asian wanted to talk about?
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