Housing Department Slaps Facebook With Discrimination Charge (npr.org) 82
The Department of Housing and Urban Development is suing social media giant Facebook for allegedly violating the Fair Housing Act. From a report: HUD says Facebook does so by "encouraging, enabling and causing housing discrimination" when it allows companies that use their platform to improperly shield who can see certain housing ads. In the charging document, HUD accuses Facebook of unlawfully discriminating against people based on race, religion, familial status, disability and other characteristics that closely align with the 1968 Fair House Act's protected classes.
HUD also alleges Facebook allowed advertisers certain tools on their advertising platform that could exclude people who were classified as "non-American-born," "non-Christian" or "interested in Hispanic culture," among other things. It also said advertisers could exclude people based on ZIP code, essentially "drawing a red line around those neighborhoods on a map." "Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live," HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a statement. "Using a computer to limit a person's housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone's face."
HUD also alleges Facebook allowed advertisers certain tools on their advertising platform that could exclude people who were classified as "non-American-born," "non-Christian" or "interested in Hispanic culture," among other things. It also said advertisers could exclude people based on ZIP code, essentially "drawing a red line around those neighborhoods on a map." "Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live," HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a statement. "Using a computer to limit a person's housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone's face."
HasBen Carson levies a fine? (Score:3)
I thought his job was to open doors to schnooks and hide regulations. geez, Bizarro Thursday.
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Since your President wasn't executed, can we then conclude that he is not a traitor.
And read the context of you copy-pasta, which was carefully chosen to reflect alternate facts. Bob Mueller was saying that he didn't want to be the one making the decision and turned it over to the AG. The AG then made the decision. NO OBSTRUCTION.
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No. We rationally acknowledge that they exist in multiple jurisdictions at the same time.
Re:Good (Score:5, Informative)
The people who place the discriminating ads are the ones who should be sued, not the advertising platform.
Actually, they should both be sued. From the charges themselves [hud.gov]:
1. It is unlawful to make unavailable or deny a dwelling to any person because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin or disability. 42 U.S.C. 3604(a), (f)(1); 24 C.F.R. 100.50(b)(1), (3); 24 C.F.R. 100.60(a); 24 C.F.R. 100.70(b); 24 C.F.R. 100.202(a).
2. It is unlawful to discriminate against any person in the terms, conditions, or privileges of the sale or rental of a dwelling, or in the provision of services or facilities in connection therewith, because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin or disability. 42 U.S.C. 3604(b), (f)(2); 24 C.F.R. 100.50(b)(2); 24 C.F.R. 100.65(a); 24 C.F.R. 100.70(b); 24 C.F.R. 100.202(b).
So, as expected, it's illegal to place the ads. But then it goes on with...
3. It is 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 based on race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin or disability, or that indicates an intention to make such a distinction. 42 U.S.C. 3604(c); 24 C.F.R. 100.75(a), (b), (c)(1).
All of which is to say (and going back to your knife analogy), Facebook is no more allowed to publish illegal housing ads than a switchblade manufacturer is allowed to sell switchblades in my state. If someone with a switchblade goes on a murder spree, the manufacturer likely won't be on the hook for the murder, but they will be pursued for the crime of having sold an illegal weapon. Likewise, while Facebook isn't on the hook for the poster's crime, they are on the hook for their own crime of unlawfully printing a discriminatory ad.
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Sorry, allow me quote the very next sentence from the above-linked document. I left it out previously for the sake of brevity since I figured no one would try to split hairs over it, but clearly I was wrong:
Such unlawful activity includes “[s]electing media or locations for advertising the sale or rental of dwellings which deny a particular segment of the housing market information about housing opportunities because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin.” 24 C.F.R. 100.75(c)(3).
So, actually, it does say something about the circulation of ads.
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This then leads to the question of who is doing the publishing? Is Facebook a publisher or are they the newspaper delivery truck and/or newsstand?
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"or cause to be made, printed, or published [...]" would seem to eliminate any contention on that basis. Besides which, it's their platform from end-to-end. While there may be questions regarding which link in the chain of events is the actual act of "publishing", there's no doubt that they're the ones doing it.
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But it's the original advertiser that presses the "submit" button that causes the ad to be published. If you ran a magazine but allowed anyone (for a price) to use your equipment to print additional pages and bind them into your magazine, who would be causing those pages to be published? Who published them? Is permitting the same as causing? I don't think these are easy questions with easy answers.
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He wasn't dead, he was hibernating.
Did you see him during the presidential campaign? He was so sleepy.
Now he's had his nap and you're going to see a whole new Ben Carson.
Wouldn't it be the people doing the discriminating (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Wouldn't it be the people doing the discriminat (Score:5, Informative)
If someone misuses the advertising tools on a platform to break the law, wouldn't that person/company be responsible for breaking the law?
Yes, the advertiser is responsible. But the publisher is ALSO responsible, and this is not an "on the internet" thing. Newspapers have been held responsible for publishing illegal ads.
Why would facebook be liable for having a wide range of advertising options available to people selling an enormous range of things, in which housing is a tiny percentage.
There are specific laws about discrimination in housing, employment, and lending. The targeting that Facebook allows for other ads should not be allowed for these.
This is akin to going after google because someone sent a hate email from gmail.
No it isn't. First, sending hate mail is not illegal, while housing discrimination is. Second, Google is not providing a mechanism to specifically target hate mail at designated groups. Yet that is what Facebook is doing.
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Google is not providing a mechanism to specifically target hate mail at designated groups. Yet that is what Facebook is doing.
Google is providing a mechanism to target media to designated groups. That media could be in their interest and nobody else's, or it could be in everybody's interests but the entity producing the ad doesn't want to deal with those groups.
One of these is legal and the other isn't. Facebook's platform can't inherently discriminate between these two things at the moment: unlike with a newspaper, Facebook ads can go out without Facebook's human-driven review.
What if someone e-mailed child pornography thr
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What if someone e-mailed child pornography through gmail?
If Google assisted the kiddie porn distributors by providing a mechanism to target people likely to have a preference for pre-pubescents, then I think it would be reasonable to hold Google partially responsible.
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sending hate mail is not illegal, while housing discrimination is
This brings up an interesting point. Apparently (courtesy of Jussie Smollet), mailing yourself threatening letters and using them in a false police report constiutes mail fraud, a Federal crime. I'm idly wondering if a person can commit mail fraud by way of email. There are plenty of articles about "email fraud", but they're mostly about how to avoid falling victim to a scam. I've never run across a reference to laws or criminal penalties for any kind of email fraud.
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There are precedents that specifically protect online services from responsibility from such ads, where the publisher has been deemed to be the advertiser. See this article from 2008.
https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com]
This will be very interesting to see play out in court.
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The only way I see FB being liable is if the selection for Housing rentals required you to select fields such as the age/race/etc of the people to show it to and did not have an option for "Show it to everyone." Which would not surprise me.
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Actually, if Facebook permits directing housing ads based on zip code, that's prohibited. They are liable if they knowingly permit the practice.
The solution would be to deny housing advertisers the ability to target or restrict based on prohibited criteria, that is, not giving them the options. A small matter of programming. And since they already scan and censor based on content, then even the content could be their responsibility. they do it in other reals, for other reasons. No excuses.
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Then you don't understand the law.
There is an EXPLICIT law that says that advertisers(facebook and google are advertisers) cannot target certain types of ads.
If they even ALLOWED the targeting, it would be illegal.
Similarly, many countries have laws that you cannot target children with smoking ads. If Facebook allowed tobacco companies to buy ads targeting children, they would be in deep shit
The problem is that Facebook naively didn't check the law about housing advertisement. This is a GIANT FUCK-UP on Fac
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That is not the out, there is one but that is not it. I would say what it is but the Facebook crew are a pack of privacy invasive cunts and they deserve to be prosecuted in every way possible.
I think it is particularly cruel to exclude people from certain postcodes. Seriously, WTF?, people live in a shitty neighbourhood and want to move out and a multi-billion dollar corporations tries to stop them, what a pack of arseholes. You could have moved to that postcode by mistake, not knowing how bad it is but on
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If someone misuses the advertising tools on a platform to break the law, wouldn't that person/company be responsible for breaking the law?
Yup. But that doesn't absolve anyone else of the legal responsibilities they may have.
Why would facebook be liable for having a wide range of advertising options available to people selling an enormous range of things, in which housing is a tiny percentage.
Because the law specifically includes the companies printing the ads. It's assumed that people will break/be ignorant of the law, so the law went a step further and placed a legal obligation on publishers running housing ads to abide by the same non-discriminatory terms. If you're a publisher who wants to run housing ads, them's the rules. If you don't like the rules, don't run housing ads (or other ads with similar condit
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Actually, re-reading that last point of mine, I know what I was getting at, but I got it wrong when I typed it up. REALLY wrong. Obviously not a lawyer.
So, to correct myself: it's illegal to deny someone housing on the basis of race/religion/gender/etc., regardless of if you've posted an ad or not. Likewise, it's illegal regardless of whether you do so verbally or in a written form.
The point I was trying—but failed woefully—to get at is that there's nothing stopping you from offering a room to a
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That and I'm not entirely certain about the Zip code. Facebook is very big and advertising to everyone everywhere as apposed to only those in the area would be huge difference in cost especially for those with just a couple rental properties. There is no law requiring them to advertise in every news paper and not just the local paper or just the local radio.
Reeeheheheeally? (Score:2)
I wonder what else they allow their subscribers* do with their product**.
*anyone who will pay for their product do with their product
**(facebookers data).
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I thought Facebookers (and non-Facebookers that Facebook tracks anyway) attention/engagement were the product.
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Facebook doesn't sell people, silly.
Easy Fix (Score:4)
While setting up the advertisements, require the poster to agree that "The advertising of my product or service is not restricted by any fair access law such as... blah blah blah. I understand that adherence to any applicable laws regarding... is my responsibility and not that of Facebook."
And that's all that should happen. Facebook shouldn't be fined or have to go to court unless the City of Los Angeles can be sued for "allowing" someone to post a room rental advertisement on a lamp post despite it clearly reading "Mexicans need not apply."
Re:Easy Fix (Score:4)
Facebook shouldn't be fined or have to go to court unless the City of Los Angeles can be sued for "allowing" someone to post a room rental advertisement on a lamp post despite it clearly reading "Mexicans need not apply."
Poor analogy, since the City of Los Angeles is not an active participant in the discrimination, while Facebook is.
Better analogy: For a fee, the City of Los Angeles will let you put an ad on a lamppost, and station a policeman at the lamppost to make sure that no black or Hispanic people see it.
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Well yeah, because there's nothing wrong with that, as it doesn't actually convey the message to the target audience. It should say "Los Mexicanos no necesitan aplicar" -- *then* there's a problem.
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Facebook requires the advertiser to declare the type of ad, in this case housing, and the type of business. They use that information to set rates. For some reason they don't use that information to limit what targeting options are available.
They say they care and want to stop this happening. They have had years to do something about it. Fuck 'em.
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Housing discrimination based on location (ZIP Code) is prohibited, commonly called 'redlining'. It has been used to both promote neighborhood racial discrimination and economic discrimination, and has been used by lenders, thereby including fair credit laws as violations.
It's not at all new. In fact, limiting MLS searches to specific area or ZIP codes is reasonable if buyers are looking for a specific location, but a salesperson should never discourage a potential buyer from an interest in a particular loca
What is the technical fix? (Score:2)
Maybe it's just that simple. Thoughts, all you clever data types?
But that would be pretty easy to get around (Score:2)
I guess you have to ban all culture-indicating tags from housing and similar opportunity (e,g, employment) ad targeting.
Which means FB has to be knowing/asking (Score:2)
That's some pretty heavy AI, unless they ask advertisers to self-disclose in some official form what kind of ad this is, which seems impractical to enforce.
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Why is it limited to AI and self-disclosure? How is compliance impractical to enforce? Was it impractical for radio, newspapers, magazines, and television to enforce? Classified advertising ring a bell?
Is there some law that says that once you move onto the internet you suddenly have no duty to put actual human thought into the transactions that you you
A moral responsibility (Score:2)
While we are investigating facebook though we also should go after credit bureaus for selling income and risk based zip
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The kind of discrimination talked about being Fair Housing Act [hud.gov]-related discrimination?
I believe that you do it by not advertising housing... which latin-dancing party ads would not be doing.
It's less fun when you don't get to make-up overly broad forms of unlawful discrimination, I know...
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You can still "target" your latin-dancing party. You can target "only white people" if you want to advertise your "Better Homes and Gardens" cookbook. You can target people for all kinds of ads, legally.
The law is only about housing.
This is pretty simple. We have some advertising laws in the USA.
You can't target housing ads towards certain ethnic groups
You can't target tobacco at children
You can't advertise medication without listing all side-effects
etc
Facebook fucked up by using a generic form for all adve
Re: Build to discriminate against White Christians (Score:1)
Mahhhhhh rights!!!! Wahhhhhh!!!
You repubtards are so fickle. Have owned the US for 200+ years, but still complain. Fucking pitiful.
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Likes and dislikes were listed as parts of the abuse, such as a user liking (some cultural thing) that tend to be liked, or not, by certain races.
Again? (Score:2)