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No. Because anyone can buy the WSJ and Teen Vogue and see the ad. If you're excluded from being targeted by an FB ad you have no chance of seeing it. If that e
by jogjayr 8y ago
No. Because anyone can buy the WSJ and Teen Vogue and see the ad.
If you're excluded from being targeted by an FB ad you have no chance of seeing it. If that exclusion criteria forms the basis of a protected class and the ad in question relates to housing, that's illegal. So it's a very narrow set of behaviors that are wrong here, not all of ad targeting.
E.g. it's probably not illegal (or even morally wrong) to exclude someone who is interested in topics such as "Hinduism" from ads for beef jerky. Even though religion is a protected class, beef jerky isn't housing.
Similarly, it's (probably) not wrong to exclude low-income people from ads for your high-end condo because AFAIK income isn't a protected class.
- quotemstr 8y agoI'm not sure it's that easy. The complaint dings Facebook for allowing targeting of ads by zip code. Isn't it the case in principle that people choose to live in certain areas? I don't think that discriminating on the basis of voluntary association that happens to correlate with protected group membership is enough to spare one from HUD's gaze.
- jogjayr 8y agoThat's just one of the charges. The others are even more damning - targeting by sex, religion or country of origin.
- quotemstr 8y ago> That's just one of the charges. The others are even more damning Irrelevant. Your claim is that targeting limitations cover only protected class membership itself and not proxies for protected class membership. I provided an example of the HUD penalizing Facebook for allowing targeting by a proxy. How is pointing out that the HUD is also complaining about non-proxy targeting supposed to invalidate my point about the HUD targeting a proxy?