Facebook has been charged with housing discrimination by the US government

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has filed charges against Facebook for housing discrimination, escalating the company’s ongoing fight over discrimination in its ad targeting system. The charges build on a complaint filed in August, finding that there is reasonable cause to believe Facebook has served ads that violate the Fair Housing Act.

“Facebook is discriminating against folks based mostly upon United Nations agency they're and wherever they live,” Housing and Urban Development Secretary mount Carson same in an exceedingly statement.

“Using a laptop to limit a person’s housing selections is even as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone’s face.”

ProPublica first raised concerns over housing discrimination on Facebook in 2016, when reporters found that the “ethnic affinities” tool could be used to exclude black or Hispanic users from seeing specific ads. If those ads were for housing or employment opportunities, the targeting could easily violate federal law. At the time, Facebook had no internal safeguards in place to prevent such targeting.

Facebook has struggled to effectively address the chance of discriminatory ad targeting.

The company pledged to step up anti-discrimination enforcement in the wake of ProPublica’s reporting, but a follow-up report in 2017 found the same problems persisted nearly a year later.
According to the HUD complaint, many of the options for targeting or excluding audiences are shockingly direct, including a map tool that explicitly echoes redlining practices.

“[Facebook] has provided a toggle button that allows advertisers to exclude men or girls from seeing a billboard, a search-box to exclude those that don't speak a particular

language from seeing an ad, and a map tool to exclude people who live in a specified area from seeing an ad by drawing a red line around that area,” the complaint reads.

Reached for comment, a Facebook representative same the corporate is already operating to handle the problemoutside of court.

“We’re shocked by HUD’s call, as we’ve been operating with them to handle their issues and have taken vital steps to stop ads discrimination,” the spokesperson.

“Last year we eliminated thousands of targeting options that could potentially be misused, and just last week we reached historic agreements with the National Fair Housing Alliance, ACLU, and others.”
As the statement mentions, Facebook has made a number of recent restrictions to audience targeting in response to these concerns. In August, the company removed 5,000 specific targeting options, including the option to exclude specific ethnicities and religions.

“While these choices are employed in legitimate ways that to succeed in folks inquisitive about a particularproduct or service, we think minimizing the risk of abuse is more important,”

the company said at the time. More recently, Facebook discontinued the ability to target housing ads by age, gender, or zip code entirely, as part of a settlement with various civil rights groups.
Still, some of the HUD charges seem to take issue with the nature of automatically optimized advertising itself, rather than any specific set of targeting instructions.

“[Facebook]’s ad delivery system prevents advertisers United Nations agency need to succeed in a broad audience of users from doing therefore,” one section of the complaint reads.

“Even if AN publicizer tries to focus on AN audience that generally spans protected category teams, [Facebook]’s ad delivery system will not show the ad to a diverse audience if

the system considers users with explicit characteristics presumably to interact with the ad.”

According to Facebook, discussions with HUD seem to have broken down over the question of the agency’s level of access to Facebook user data.

“While we tend to were desperate to notice an answer, HUD insisted on access to sensitive information — like user data — without adequate safeguards,” the statement continues.

“We’re frustrated by today’s developments, but we’ll continue working with civil rights experts on these issues.”

This is the primary federal discrimination proceeding to traumatize racial bias in targeted advertising, a milestone that lawyers at HUD said was overdue.

“Even as we confront new technologies, the fair housing laws enacted over half a century ago remain clear—discrimination in housing-related advertising is against the law,” said HUD General Counsel Paul Compton.

“Just as a result of a method to deliver advertising is opaque and sophisticated doesn’t mean that it’s exempts Facebook et al. from our scrutiny and also the law of the land.