{"id":181000,"date":"2016-10-31T20:28:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-01T01:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/10\/31\/while-we-are-on-the-subject-of-new-economy-bigotry\/"},"modified":"2016-10-31T20:28:00","modified_gmt":"2016-11-01T01:28:00","slug":"while-we-are-on-the-subject-of-new-economy-bigotry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2016\/10\/31\/while-we-are-on-the-subject-of-new-economy-bigotry\/","title":{"rendered":"While We are on the Subject of “New Economy” Bigotry"},"content":{"rendered":"
Facebook has been allowing advertisers to exclude targets by race and ethnicity<\/a>, and they allow people to do so for ads for real estate and employment, which is illegal as hell:<\/div>\n

The ad we purchased was targeted to Facebook members who were house hunting and excluded anyone with an \u201caffinity\u201d for African-American, Asian-American or Hispanic people. (Here\u2019s the ad itself<\/a>.) <\/p>\n

When we showed Facebook\u2019s racial exclusion options to a prominent civil rights lawyer John Relman<\/a>, he gasped and said, \u201cThis is horrifying. This is massively illegal. This is about as blatant a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act as one can find.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 makes it illegal<\/a> “to make, print, or publish, or cause to be made, printed, or published any notice, statement, or advertisement, with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin.\u201d Violators can face tens of thousands of dollars in fines<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The Civil Rights Act of 1964<\/a> also prohibits the \u201cprinting or publication of notices or advertisements indicating prohibited preference, limitation, specification or discrimination\u201d in employment recruitment.<\/p>\n

acebook\u2019s business model is based on allowing advertisers to target specific groups \u2014 or, apparently to exclude specific groups \u2014 using huge reams of personal data the company has collected about its users. Facebook\u2019s microtargeting is particularly helpful for advertisers looking to reach niche audiences, such as swing-state voters concerned about climate change. ProPublica recently offered a tool allowing users to see how Facebook is categorizing them<\/a>. We found nearly 50,000 unique categories in which Facebook places its users.<\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Satterfield said it\u2019s important for advertisers to have the ability to both include and exclude groups as they test how their marketing performs. For instance, he said, an advertiser \u201cmight run one campaign in English that excludes the Hispanic affinity group to see how well the campaign performs against running that ad campaign in Spanish. This is a common practice in the industry.\u201d <\/p>\n

He said Facebook began offering the \u201cEthnic Affinity\u201d categories within the past two years as part of a \u201cmulticultural advertising\u201d effort. <\/p>\n

Satterfield added that the \u201cEthnic Affinity\u201d is not the same as race \u2014 which Facebook does not ask its members about. Facebook assigns members an \u201cEthnic Affinity\u201d based on pages and posts they have liked or engaged with on Facebook. <\/p>\n

When we asked why \u201cEthnic Affinity\u201d was included in the \u201cDemographics\u201d category of its ad-targeting tool if it\u2019s not a representation of demographics, Facebook responded that it plans to move \u201cEthnic Affinity\u201d to another section.<\/p>\n

Facebook declined to answer questions about why our housing-categories ad excluding minority groups was approved 15 minutes after we placed the order. By comparison, consider the advertising controls that the New York Times has put in place to prevent discriminatory housing ads. After the newspaper was successfully sued under the Fair Housing Act in 1989, it agreed to review ads for potentially discriminatory content<\/a> before accepting them for publication<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s OK, because \u2026\u2026\u2026 internet.<\/p>\n

I am so sick and tired of the entitled white boys in the tech industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Facebook has been allowing advertisers to exclude targets by race and ethnicity, and they allow people to do so for ads for real estate and employment, which is illegal as hell: The ad we purchased was targeted to Facebook members who were house hunting and excluded anyone with an \u201caffinity\u201d for African-American, Asian-American or Hispanic …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[867,775,761,766,788,875,826],"class_list":["post-181000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-bigotry","tag-business","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-internet","tag-racism","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181000"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181000\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}