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How did they not see this coming. Are they not familiar with another dotcom called Craigslist who had to deal with this very same regulation years ago. Their co
by yardie 8y ago
How did they not see this coming. Are they not familiar with another dotcom called Craigslist who had to deal with this very same regulation years ago. Their counsel either wasn't aware of what FB marketplace was doing or didn't know about FHA laws.
> draw a red line around zip codes and then not display ads to Facebook users who live in specific zip codes.
This alone is really damn damning. I'm going to go out on a limb and say their counsel is really young and didn't know this was a problem. There is a lot of history in that sentence alone.
- dev_dull 8y agoI’m sure their counsel knows exactly what they’re doing. Sometimes when you’re big and bad enough it’s worth it to take a gamble and see how things will settle in court. And that’s not even necessarily a bad thing. People and cultures change and so should our regulation and laws.
- EB66 8y ago> And that’s not even necessarily a bad thing. ...what? Are you suggesting it's a good thing that we bring back red lining and other discriminatory practices?
- earloflexus 8y agoYeah - where'd Facebook get the idea that businesses should be able to choose who they work with? Is it any surprise that they who deplatformed Alex Jones allow landlords to discriminate as well?
- dwaltrip 8y agoReading charitably, perhaps they meant: it was bad in the case, but it isn't always a bad thing.
- mikec3010 8y agoIf you dont show someone an ad, that's not discrimination. It's just not advertising to a group of people.
- EB66 8y agoIt's a form of discrimination though admittedly not the most egregious form of discrimination. The HUD has explicit regulations and guidelines involving "Selective use of advertising media or content" and "Selective geographic advertisements". The legal threshold for discrimination is set a lot lower for housing than it is in other scenarios For good reason too -- the consequences of discriminated, for example, at a coffee shop are far less impactful than being discriminated for what housing you can find and obtain.
- SamReidHughes 8y ago> ...what? Are you suggesting it's a good thing that we bring back red lining and other discriminatory practices? Putting words into people's mouths like that is incredibly rude, and dishonest.
- pvg 8y agoThat might be phrased stridently but it's not 'putting words into someone's mouth'. It's a question.
- zaroth 8y agoI think OP could have found a better way to word it which wouldn’t seem so hostile and accusatory, if they spent another few seconds before clicking ‘reply’.
- pvg 8y agoI think there's something in the guidelines about how if you're going to yell at someone for being rude, you should take care to give them the most charitable and accurate yelling possible.
- cpkpad 8y agoI don't think that's what's being suggested. The idea that redlining should be reexamined by the courts every half century or so is what's being suggested. In 2018, courts ought to find its still illegal give facebook a book fine. In 2118? Hopefully we'll be past racism and courts will find the concept obsolete and antiquated. Or they may find racism is common but the tools needed to manage it are different. The Internet has a great search for secret closet racists, but they're pretty rare. For the most part, it makes sense to give people the benefit of the doubt.
- doctorless 8y agoHaving been in a mixed-race relationship where one partner is brown, I can tell you firsthandedly that if you think racism is rare, then you’re probably white or Asian or you have consistently lived in areas where racism is actually rare. I lived in places where when I was young, I never saw anyone engage in racist behaviors. This changed the moment I entered that relationship. It may have ended long ago, but it’s definitely made me more aware of the subtle ways that people show prejudice when it’s not outright. Is it a majority? No. At least one in ten? Much closer to reality. We’ve got a long way to go, even still. Don’t forget that schools were still segregated in America less than a century ago — there are leaders in government and industry that grew up in that environment. You’ve got at least two generations to die off before we can really say that the impacts of that era are negligible.
- iamdave 8y agoif you think racism is rare, then you’re probably white or Asian I sincerely hope this isn't an intimation that Asians are somehow immune from forms of racism or racially charged behavior? Would you be able to clarify this a bit? Maybe I've misunderstood you.
- doctorless 8y agoDefinitely not the implication. Everyone can receive racially charged behavior, however the outright hostility towards lighter-skinned Asians in the United States is significantly lower than towards other minority groups as well as darker-skinned Asians.
- vageli 8y agoHow do you think Uber and Airbnb became legal?
- dang 8y ago"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- exergy 8y agoI cannot conceive of a "stronger" explanation for what the GP stated. What kind of good faith argument could possibly be assumed in that guy asking that maybe reexamining Redline laws isn't the worst thing. It's a vile thing to say, and a statement made, I can only assume, in utter and wanton disregard of racial history of the United States. It's a bit shameful that you flagged the parent and not the grandparent, who seems to be playing devil's advocate purely for the sake of an argument.
- bodas 8y agoIt's very clear what they were saying, is that if one follows the law at all time there is no chance that a bad thing will "accidentally" happen. You are actually the one violating that policy.
- noobermin 8y agoDown the the literal words "red line"[0]. For, I suppose young or otherwise ignorant people, here: [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
- vilhelm_s 8y agoThe "red line" wording is from the HUD press release. I don't think there is any red line in the Facebook UI, you input a list of zip codes. (https://www.facebook.com/business/help/community/question/?id=10205760191020429 https://www.facebook.com/business/help/community/question/?i...)
- xphilter 8y agoNot true. I was able to draw actual red lines excluding zip codes from seeing a housing ad. But this was 8-10 months ago. It’s possible they changed the UI.
- ABCLAW 8y agoWas Legal just sleeping at the wheel? This is a very well known piece of history. I wonder how this conversation went when they were drawing up this feature.
- mindslight 8y agoNot preventing people from doing something illegal is not itself illegal?
- ABCLAW 8y agoThat's not the legal test to determine if someone is afoul of the legal test that Facebook is accused of violating. The wording of the provision they've run afoul of is elsewhere in the thread; it disagrees with you. My point is more along the lines of Legal needed to be asleep at the wheel to let a team put together a solution where you literally draw a red line around zip codes to exclude them.
- mindslight 8y agoSure, it's just kind of a longstanding concept. If I've found the provision you're referencing (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17790555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17790555), then it's a bit disingenuous to assert Faceboot is automatically in its scope, when it's this status as a conduit versus editor that is the very thing we're grappling with. As has been explained elsewhere in this thread, there are legitimate uses for selecting specific areas at the level of zip codes. Sure, we could hope for Faceboot to do a better implementation based on some intelligence, but that would be asking for a positive action. But by all means, don't let any sort of nuance get in the way of today's two-minute hate! I'm sure all those racists that are about to hit a speed bump will be deeply reconsidering their views.
- reaperducer 8y agoHow did they not see this coming. Are they not familiar with another dotcom called Craigslist who had to deal with this very same regulation years ago. I guess "move fast and break things" applies both to code and the law.
- AnthonyMouse 8y ago> draw a red line around zip codes and then not display ads to Facebook users who live in specific zip codes. This is actually somewhat odd in this context. Obviously if you're advertising housing in Boston you don't want to be advertising it to people in Washington or China, or probably even Springfield. So you need some way to specify a set of regions and zip code is the obvious way of doing that.
- philipov 8y agoNo, specifying individual zip codes sounds like the worst way to do that. The obvious way is to have a max distance slider.
- AnthonyMouse 8y agoExcept that that doesn't work when you're advertising housing in Florida and you want to advertise to people in the Northeast who want to retire somewhere warm but not people in the South who already live somewhere warm.
- cowsandmilk 8y agoIt is almost as if we have geographic areas larger than zip codes such as cities, states, regions, that can be targeted without running afoul of laws about targeted advertising of real estate.
- AnthonyMouse 8y agoIf you exclude all of Oakland specifically because it's full of minorities, you're discriminating based on race. If you exclude one tiny neighborhood because it's on the other side of a mountain and is physically a part of a different area than it's administratively a part of, you aren't. Granularity isn't the problem. And state or regional real estate advertising doesn't work because basically nobody in San Francisco is looking for housing in Los Angeles or vice versa, much less San Francisco and Phoenix.
- 8y ago
- tomjakubowski 8y agoMan, I wish I could be so optimistic to think they just didn't know any better.
- sorokod 8y agoPerhaps they did, but figured that on the balance, the profit will outweigh the penalty.