Why is Facebook in trouble for this and not the persons who actually placed the ads? They aren't the ones renting the real estate. They don't own it. Government overreach imo.
They are enforcing this part of the FHA (emphasis mine):
>(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.
If people actually did place housing discrimination ads they'd also be in violation of the law.
(In general, laws are usually written in a way to prevent profiting off of illegal behavior)
They should. Allowing large commercial entities to facilitilate discrimination and only going after individual landlords would be an extremely inefficient use of limited resources.
The inefficiency of the process shouldn't be a deciding factor. Should be the justness of it. Facebook isn't discriminating. We don't punish shipping companies when their resources are used for drug smuggling. We punish the individuals involved in the illicit act.
edit: Not entirely sure how arguing that our system should be a just one more so than one that goes after what is easiest is getting down voted so much but ok.
If your edit is in earnest it's because your comment comes off as naive. Inefficiency _must_ be one of several deciding factors because our resources are limited.
Tying resources up in a maximally just be deeply inefficient process prevents us from dealing with other problems of injustice for whom the solution requires more resources. The world _requires_ us to consider factors other than maximal justice in individual cases if we are to maximize justice in a broader societal context.
To me that sounds like a trade off of due process and justness. Which I hold in high opinion of. At the EOD all laws are backed by violence. If the state is to resort to that they better be right.
The HUD press release contains the following text, which is pretty damning:
>Additionally, Facebook promotes its advertising targeting platform for housing purposes with "success stories" for finding "the perfect homeowners," "reaching home buyers," "attracting renters" and "personalizing property ads."
Craigslist and Backpage "allowed" rampant sex trafficking but I'd imagine the HN community wasn't happy with government shutting down those sections of the internet. FB isn't the one engaging in the discrimination imo.
But these ads do NOT indicate any preference.
These ads simply do not run for the people outside of target audience.
The main reason why racial preferences are not allowed to get published -- is because it reinforces public bias toward specific race. But if ads are simply not shown to some group -- what is the problem with that?
This is similar to if the NYT ran discriminatory ads - which is an actual case from the 1980s and resulted in both notable fines, and the NYT having humans review housing ads for discriminatory practices, such as having an unrepresentably white set of models in housing ads (from one of the propublica links in some of the other comments). Same goes for craigslist, which also has to screen housing ads.
I'd argue both are responsible - the platform hosting the ad and the people making the ad.
We need to go by the law here, which indicates an ad publisher is guilty in addition to the one who placed the ad. You may argue an opinion about the law, but it looks like Facebook is in violation of it.
I feel like FB could have covered their ass if they had a pop up menu for every rental ad that says "All ads must abide by the Fair Housing Act...click for more info. Check this box if you acknowledge your advertising practice abides by it"
Rhetorical or not, this question deserves to be upvoted more.
How is it different from hardware store that sell knives that can be used to cut vegetables or people, at the discretion of the buyer?
Maybe a better way to deal with that is a different regulation. Mandate the industry designation in the ad and if it is something protected by existing laws, like housing or job ads, remove filters that allow for adding or removing by protected category from the interface.
The difference is that the law shouldn't even be on the books imo. The person discriminating is the private property owner/manager they engaged in the advertising. Facebook did not.
How would a common person know they were discriminated against digitally on Facebook? Why should such a tool geared towards discrimination of protected classes not be held liable when there is no alternative legal use case for allowing filtering of protected classes for displaying of housing ads.
As a user of Facebook, this method of discrimination is markedly different than physically showing up to a house for rent and the home owner taking one look at you, scrunching up their face, and saying it's no longer available, tipping you off that what they are doing is illegal.
If Facebook isn't displaying the ad to you but you walk into the apartment management office and are denied the ability to rent (despite having the means) because you are a minority is Facebook liable? Again Facebook isn't a potential party to a rental or sale agreement. Can't deny you housing. Again Facebook isn't the one placing the ad.
I don’t argue that ads in the context of housing is illegal.
Targeting specific demographic using protected categories in other areas can be legal too.
As a pharmaceutical company you can target women, men, seniors for targeted medications. As a LGBTQ dating site you can target based on sexual orientation and cis/trans. It is not illegal. Housing and jobs (maybe something else) are covered by specific legislation.
Agreed. These restrictions only apply in a few legally defined areas.
The fact an LGBT dating site can choose ‘don’t show to heterosexual people (a waste of my ad spend)’ is one of the reasons their platform is so effective, especially compared to mass media like TV/magazines.
That seems like a poor argument for why it should be illegal, since facebook ads are not limited to housing and employment.
The analogous argument for knives would be "In the context of torture knives don't have any legal uses. (So knife sellers need to put safe guards in preventing their knives from torturing people)".
The laws are on the books because of rampant discrimination against minorities in prior eras. It took the entire civil rights movement to start to make progress on addressing these issues, which included laws making some of the worst practices illegal.
I'm trying not to say anything too mean, so I'll just say this: learn some history.
Facebook is aware, by virtue of the filtering in their system that allows such targeting to have, that such advertising is illegal, and chooses to present it (_and make money from it_) anyway.
Technically, the people who placed the ads are also liable.
Practically speaking, which one sounds better: "HUD files discrimination complaint against Facebook" or "HUD files discrimination complaint against Jimmy's Duplex-Mania in rural Alabama"?
HUD wouldn't be the ones to go after them. Per how the US Government works, the Department of Justice[1] would be the ones to go after the individuals involved. If you go to the DoJ website they have some very recent press releases on redlining prosecution, but I get the feeling it would take a while to figure out if any are related to Facebook ads (there search sucks).
Edit: grammatical mistakes