
Facebook Still Letting Housing Advertisers Exclude Users by Race - topspin
https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-advertising-discrimination-housing-race-sex-national-origin
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egwynn
The text of the law[0] is surprisingly clear that FB's acceptance of these ads
is illegal (unless I'm missing something big).

    
    
        As made applicable by section 3603 of this title and except as exempted by
        sections 3603(b) and 3607 of this title, it shall be unlawful—
        ...
        (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.
    

[0]
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/3604#c](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/3604#c)

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superchink
See, I didn't read it that way.

"…that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination…"

If the ad itself does not mention the preference, then it does not seem to be
covered by this clause.

Would it not be analogous to advertising the property to a particular racial
or religious group, such as a church bulletin board?

The distribution of the ad is being targeted, but the ad itself does not
indicate any preference. It seems as if the latter is the only thing that is
deemed illegal by the law.

Am I reading it correctly?

~~~
Lukeas14
I agree it doesn't seem to violate the letter of this particular law.

But it's close to being the digital version of redlining. Before the Fair
Housing Act real estate brokers would show certain houses only to white
clients and other houses only to clients of color. That was explicitly deemed
illegal. If you see real estate brokers as a medium through which sellers
would advertise their houses I don't see how this is much different.

~~~
brad_chad
There is a huge difference.

1\. Real estate was not easily searchable in the past.

2\. An ad is at least one degree away from a broker in this process. The
broker works directly with the buyer and seller while an ad passes leads to
brokers.

~~~
scarface74
Sometimes I think what real estate agents can't say goes too far.

[https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/articles/what-
your...](https://realestate.usnews.com/real-estate/articles/what-your-real-
estate-agent-cant-tell-you)

The three that stand out are that a real estate agent can't mention crime
rates, school ratings, or that a house may not be wheelchair accessible - even
if the buyer asks.

~~~
mc32
That's a bit odd since now all that data is available to the public --why bind
the RE agent's hands in this matter? I mean, perhaps in the past they had
"insider" knowledge of those particular statistics but not today.

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gcatalfamo
Recognizing race does not equal being racist at all, imho.

I don't want to live in a society where I can't objectively (in no bad way
whatsoever) acknowledge trait differences, whether they be skin colour or hair
length.

~~~
UncleMeat
Sucks to be a black person in such a society, though. For no reason other than
their skin color they are lumped in with a group of people lower average
prosperity and then are denied access to resources and systems because of this
grouping. Especially when these disparities are themselves caused by a history
of deliberate oppression. How convenient that we get to continue to perpetuate
inequalities that were themselves caused by the group in the majority. The
grouping itself is a problem and produces false or misleading ideas about
individuals.

Men are far more likely to commit violent crimes than women. Should employers
and landlords be able to blanket deny access to men?

~~~
npstr
Employers and landlords should be able to deny access to anyone they please.
It's their company and their property, after all.

~~~
5ilv3r
It's absolutely morally indefensible to refuse services because of what
someone was born as.

~~~
npstr
Any company or landlord who does such a thing will go out of business, since
any clever competitor will snatch those great deals that those companies and
landlords are missing out on.

~~~
mrkurt
That is ... not actually true. It'd be great if that's what happened, but we
have several decades of discriminatory housing/credit policies that haven't
put companies out of business. _Equifax_ started primarily as a tool to help
people discriminate.

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sologoub
Can any attorney with knowledge of fair housing weigh in on this? Law quotes
states that the ad cannot say these things, but the publishing of an ad in a
medium targeted based on these seems like a relatively new ground, since the
ad itself is likely fine, but how it is distributed is definitely not in the
spirit of the law.

In finance, I'm fairly sure zip+4 is off limits in many pricing models for
this exact reason - it is too specific. However, I'm not aware of anything
like this in advertising publishing that a given ad has to have a chance of
being seen regardless of the protected categories.

Regardless of the law, it's definitely extremely unethical to do this.

~~~
paulddraper
It's not new ground, nor do I believe it to be necessarily unethical.

People can and do advertise in predominantly white settings or black settings,
e.g. a church or a sports game or a magazine.

Advertising has always, always, always been a numbers game. Didn't advertise
on billboards in the middle of Wyoming? Maybe because there was lower ROI than
elsewhere.

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tareqak
Techmeme summary: _ProPublica: Ads for housing that exclude demographics are
still being approved by Facebook, a year after a study highlighted the illegal
discriminatory practice on Facebook_

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apk-d
Is there a non-negligible fraction of ads that do this for this to be an
actual problem? Or is it another article riding the wave of the media crusade
against Facebook? Genuine question, I don't have a Facebook account and I live
in a country rather separated from the racial discrimination concerns present
in the US.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
Facebook doesn't publish what interest categories and demographics go into
their ads (aka you can't click on an ad in FB and see what led to it being
shown to you).

But we're talking billions of dollars a year in ads, of which real estate is a
respectable percentage (FB is very good at doing geographic targeting).

And you certainly also have these relatively unsupervised and opaque "interest
categories" that are being presented to advertisers.

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koliber
Someone explained to me a while ago, in New York State, it was illegal to
discriminate on race, color, religion, sex, etc. for renting out apartments in
3+ unit dwellings.

As an owner of a single home, renting out the upstairs apartment, it was
supposedly perfectly OK to discriminate based on those things.

I never dug into this, but if it is true, the question is: "Should Facebook ad
tools facilitate such discrimination, even if it is not forbidden by law?".

~~~
extra88
It's this federal law the Fair Housing Act, not state law, that has an
exception for smaller properties where the owner lives (New York may further
extend federal protections). The exception only allows discrimination in not
allowing someone to live there, it's still illegal to advertise in a
discriminatory way.

[https://fairhousing.foxrothschild.com/2010/06/articles/fha-b...](https://fairhousing.foxrothschild.com/2010/06/articles/fha-
basics/the-mrs-murphy-exemption-to-the-fair-housing-act/)

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joelrunyon
If people keep following the logical end of this, then facebook and google's
entire business model is going to implode on itself.

All of online marketing is basically segmenting populations by various group
traits. It says nothing about the individual, but as a marketer you think in
those broad categories that maybe, just maybe different ages, races, locations
might respond differently to ads.

~~~
jacalata
Are you using the slippery slope fallacy to argue against the existence of
federal protected classes?

~~~
joelrunyon
Nope.

I'm just saying that if you remove the ability to target ads based on specific
person characteristics, you remove a piece of what makes fb so valuable of an
advertising platform (that is to target people so microscopically).

Just pointing it out.

~~~
solatic
The number of products to which such non-discrimination law applies to is
vanishingly small though. It's not illegal, for instance, to racially target
advertisements for flagship smartphones towards white people (since white
people tend to be richer and thus have more disposable income), not that any
marketing agency would do that in practice.

Completely avoiding bias in advertisement is an exercise in futility. Are you
a toy manufacturer? Advertise on children's TV shows - not that such a
marketing strategy states that adults will never buy the toys, or that the
business of adults buying such toys for themselves is unwelcome. Are you a
cosmetics manufacturer? Advertise in cisfemale interest magazines - not that
such a marketing strategy states that noncisgender individuals will never buy
cisfemale-targeted cosmetics, or that the business of noncisgender individuals
buying such cosmetics for themselves is unwelcome.

~~~
joelrunyon
> Completely avoiding bias in advertisement is an exercise in futility.

That's not the point of the ad system. The point is to optimize inventory +
bidding. So you can bid on all of those -sure, but if you have the capability
to break down children toy ads to children + to adults - you do it and have
different strategies for both (broad based appeal to kids and buy-action to
parents). You can be more precise with the ads + the spend so it makes sense
to do it.

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Balgair
Not to de-rail the thread, but man, FB's slide here has been _fast_. Just
about 1 year ago we were talking about 'fake news' as a threat separate from
FB. FB was still considered 'neutral' at worst, if not a 'good' thing.

Now? It seems like everyone hates them. Not that they are doing themselves
favors at all, but them and Uber are downright villains now.

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ggg9990
They can just advertise to people who like Bing Crosby instead.

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lopatin
And that's not all, I hear they're still letting make-up advertisers to
exclude users by gender.

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dudul
Do these laws really yield results?

If somebody doesn't want to rent to or hire a person of a certain race they
just won't. They may be forced to not be specific in their ad, but in the end
they still won't call you back.

~~~
jacalata
For a single person renting out one house, they will get away with it. But for
an apartment complex, they can get investigated and have secret shoppers come
in and then they get in trouble for not treating the two marker customers the
same.

