"Someone used the internet to do something illegal." This is not really news. "Someone used this specific product on the internet to do something illegal." S

"Someone used the internet to do something illegal." This is not really news. "Someone used this specific product on the internet to do something illegal." Still not really news. "Some small business you've never heard of used an iPhone to do something illegal" I don't think this would have gotten any coverage. "Someone used Facebook to do something illegal." Why is this news? "You have these instances in which but for Facebook’s algorithms steering these opportunities away, someone may have been able to get one of these life-changing opportunities from a business that would have given it to them.” This is sort of a load of crap, given that we're talking about advertising. These same people probably turn right around and complain about "predatory advertisers" maliciously offering dangerous credit cards to disadvantaged groups. And why isn't this guy upset at the people in these companies who are making the illegal targeting decisions in the first place, as opposed to FB? As far as I can see the only thing FB failed to do here is fail to automatically detect that the subject matter of these specific advertisements were subject to a legal restriction on targeting that doesn't apply in the general case. EDIT: In fact upon further review it's not even clear to me that any of the behavior described here is actually illegal. Targeting advertising is not the same as discrimination in making credit decisions, which is the only thing actually identified as illegal in the article. The article only says that this is against FB policy and mentions some kind of a civil lawsuit and settlement.