HUD charges Facebook with discrimination

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development charged Facebook today, claiming it violated the Fair Housing Act.

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HUD’s charge in a nutshell

HUD alleged that Facebook is discriminating against its users by restricting which of them can view its ads for homes and apartments. HUD also alleges that Facebook is data-mining its users, using that data to determine who is viewing housing-related ads based on race, color, national origin, religion, familial status, sex, and disability.

According to HUD, Facebook allowed advertisers to avoid users who were parents, born outside the U.S., non-Christian, interested in accessibility, interested in Hispanic culture, or fell under other categories protected by the Fair Housing Act.

Facebook also allowed housing advertisers to choose not to advertise to users based on their neighborhood by drawing a red line around said neighborhoods on a map. “Redlining” has a long and ugly past in the United States. Advertisers were also allowed to exclude women from their housing ads.

Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live. Using a computer to limit a person’s housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone’s face. Read more: https://t.co/ZKdVQrIAXB

— Ben Carson (@SecretaryCarson) March 28, 2019

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Facebook’s response

Both Mark Zuckerberg and the Facebook Newsroom have remained silent about the charge, but Facebook spokesman Joel Osborne offered this statement: “We’re surprised by HUD’s decision, as we’ve been working with them to address their concerns and have taken significant steps to prevent ads discrimination.”

More than a week before HUD announced the charge, Facebook posted an article about how the company plans to do more to stop discrimination in housing advertising.

“Our policies already prohibit advertisers from using our tools to discriminate. We’ve removed thousands of categories from targeting related to protected classes such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and religion. But we can do better,” Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, wrote.

The article goes on to say that Facebook will take these steps to protect its users from discrimination:

• Anyone who wants to run housing, employment or credit ads will no longer be allowed to target by age, gender, or zip code.
• Advertisers offering housing, employment, and credit opportunities will have a much smaller set of targeting categories to use in their campaigns overall. Multicultural affinity targeting will continue to be unavailable for these ads. Additionally, any detailed targeting option describing or appearing to relate to protected classes will also be unavailable.
• We’re building a tool so you can search for and view all current housing ads in the US targeted to different places across the country, regardless of whether the ads are shown to you.

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It is pretty clear that Facebook knew HUD’s charge was coming, so they wanted to get ahead of the issue while they could.

What happens next?

The charge will be heard by a United States Administrative Law Judge unless any party wants to have the case heard in federal district court. Facebook may have to pay damages if the judge determines the company discriminated against users.

You can read HUD’s full charge on Facebook here.