
ACLU reaches settlement with Facebook over discriminatory ads - atlasunshrugged
https://www.axios.com/aclu-reaches-settlement-with-facebook-over-ad-discrimination--f91778c9-d594-401d-8f57-5373663d857d.html
======
manfredo
I've never really understood how targeted ads, aside from things like job or
housing opportunities, would be considered harmful discriminatory. Yes it's
_discrimination_ in the basic sense of the word - the same way that my company
discriminates between men and women in our work experience surveys so that we
can see any differences in trends.

If I'm selling high heeled shoes, why should I not be able to target my ads to
women? If I'm trying to solicit support for, say, a charity focused on helping
South American immigrants why should I not be able to target Latin immigrants
if I have a belief that they will be more invested and likely to follow up? If
I built a new church why shouldn't I be able to advertise to Christians?

Certainly, using such categories for job and housing advertisements should not
be allowed. But if I'm reading Facebook's announcement correctly targeting on
race and gender is being completely removed [1]. I'd make more sense for me to
just forbid it for jobs and housing. If that's too difficult, explicitly limit
it to selling people consumer goods like shoes, concert tickets, and video
games.

1\. [https://www.facebook.com/business/news/keeping-
advertising-s...](https://www.facebook.com/business/news/keeping-advertising-
safe-and-civil)

~~~
sacheendra
This case was about targeted ads for housing, credit cards, etc. You can't
target people of a gender or color for such things by law.

~~~
manfredo
Facebook already forbade using those categories for targeting ads for those
things:

> For over a year, we have required advertisers we identify offering housing,
> employment or credit ads to certify compliance with our non-discrimination
> policy.

It looks to me like they're removing this as an option for all types of ads:

> We’re committed to protecting people from discriminatory advertising on our
> platforms. That’s why we’re removing over 5,000 targeting options to help
> prevent misuse. While these options have been used in legitimate ways to
> reach people interested in a certain product or service, we think minimizing
> the risk of abuse is more important. This includes limiting the ability for
> advertisers to exclude audiences that relate to attributes such as ethnicity
> or religion.

~~~
watwut
Facebook forbade those only after reports. There were further issues followed
by ACLU which ended in agreement that requries further changes.

Chain of events: 1.) A series of investigative reports over the past two years
have uncovered ways that users can abuse Facebook's ad platform in order to
discriminate against some populations, mainly people of color, when it comes
to certain marketing for certain opportunities, like housing, employment or
credit.

2.) Following the reports, the Department of Housing and Urban Development
(HUD) filed a complaint against Facebook [...], charging that the social
network allows advertisers to illegally discriminate in housing ads by
excluding some groups from seeing the ads.

3.) Shortly after, Facebook removed over 5,000 ad-targeting options to prevent
that capability.

4.) In September, the ACLU and its law firm, representing the Communications
Workers of America and several individual job seekers, filed charges with the
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Facebook and a number of
employers, alleging that they had unlawfully discriminated against certain
populations via their ad targeting platform.

5.) As part of the settlement, Facebook will pay $5 million to several groups,
[...] It will also take three new steps to prevent advertisers from engaging
in unlawful discrimination around employment, housing, and credit ads on
Facebook and its subsidiaries (Instagram, Whatsapp, Messenger, etc.):archive
for housing ads,

------
psychometry
I'm sure sneaky landlords can get around this. There are plenty of demographic
categories that correlate with race that I'm sure are still available on FB.

~~~
openasocket
Definitely, and that will make it harder to detect, but if you suspect it's
the case and manage to sue, it becomes pretty obvious. They'll have a tough
time explaining to the court why they chose to target their apartment ads to,
say, people who buy sunscreen. And trying to pick a more subtle demographic
will come off as even more ridiculous.

~~~
blotter_paper
I can imagine seemingly justifiable proxies. Targeting people who buy lawn
care products and people who buy wild bird food is both arguably enriching to
the neighborhood (birds and grass look nice) and probably correlates to WASPs
fairly well. I remember the bird food example being brought up as something
that credit ratings are influenced by, but I don't remember the source.

Edit based on sketchy memory: s/organic/wild

------
sheana_ahlqvist
> The big picture: Unlike television or radio, internet platforms that sell
> ads aren't regulated.

I'm surprised that this continues to the case, especially in examples like
this where EXISTING regulations seem to fit pretty squarely with "new"
problems created on tech platforms. There's some really interesting work on
how differently tech companies are regulated from other kinds of companies
(e.g., here: [https://innovationforallcast.com/2019/01/23/amanda-lotz-
what...](https://innovationforallcast.com/2019/01/23/amanda-lotz-what-is-a-
tech-company/))

------
tracker1
Along a similar line... I'm always surprised we don't see more generalized
less-targeted advertising on the web for regular products like Coca-Cola or
Charmin, etc like you do on TV. Perhaps with click-through to online games for
engagement or coupons, etc.

~~~
blotter_paper
Proposed reason that just popped into my head, and could be wrong: advertising
that cannot be targeted to individuals is less effective, so there is less
competition for it. Thus prices are low relative to ads that can be targeted.
Thus companies with a wide target demographic can buy these spots cheaper,
while companies that are targeting a specific niche get more bang for their
buck from relatively expensive targeted ads.

~~~
tracker1
The size/scale of Twitter or Facebook, etc may be an example where it might be
better for generic inline advertising over the "promoted" messages. I can
understand where a smaller site may do better with random targeted ads... I'm
just a little surprised it hasn't been done or tried much that I am aware of.

~~~
blotter_paper
I don't see why scale should affect whether targeting makes sense (with the
exception of entities like facebook that have collected so much data on their
own that they can target better than smaller competitors, which leads
targeting increasing with scale, not decreasing). Television isn't targeted
because it wasn't designed to be, and hasn't been updated (yet) -- they would
need to deliver different ads to different homes. This is already done for
different localities, but not individual homes (that I'm aware of). It's not a
scale issue. Targeted billboards are coming[0], albeit not based on individual
browsing habits (yet). I don't think this is about scale (mostly), I think
it's about the technical feasibility of tracking and targeting customers on a
given platform in $CURRENT_YEAR.

>random targeted ads

I'm genuinely confused by what this is supposed to mean. To me, random is
antithetical to targeted. In my reading I decided to drop the random, but I
should note that I may be parsing your intent incorrectly as a result of that.

[0]
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/a...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/articles/2018-08-10/google-
s-targeted-ads-are-coming-to-a-billboard-near-you)

------
crushcrashcrush
FIVE MILLION DOLLARS?

Seriously? That's it? What a fucking slap in the face. Mark Zuckerberg's home
remodel's PARKING FEES in the Mission were about that.

