U.S. government slams Facebook with housing discrimination charges

Hyper-specific ad targeting must have sounded like a really great idea at the time, huh? Now, Facebook is paying the price.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) filed charges against Facebook for housing discrimination on Thursday. First reported by The Verge, the charges allege that Facebook's advertising tools violate the Fair Housing Act because they enable housing discrimination on the basis of the protected classes of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin.

The charge follows an August 2018 complaint HUD issued on the same matter. Since ProPublicla published an investigation into how Facebook's advertising tools allow for housing discrimination in 2016, Facebook supposedly started working to make changes. But a follow-up report from ProPublica in 2017 showed that the practice continued despite Facebook's pledge. Now, the government is taking action.

“Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live,” HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a statement. “Using a computer to limit a person’s housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone’s face.”

This March, Facebook removed targeting tools that allowed housing, job, and credit advertisers to target on the basis of protected classes. That was as part of a settlement of a lawsuit filed by the ACLU on the discrimination charges. But it seems that was too little, too late.

Discussions between Facebook and HUD reportedly broke down when Facebook would not provide HUD with the user data it requested. That's because the charge alleges that discrimination is baked into Facebook's advertising tools. Even after Facebook removed several ad options for housing advertisers, HUD says Facebook is still guilty of discrimination because its algorithm will show some ads to only certain groups of people.

"Just because a process to deliver advertising is opaque and complex doesn’t mean that it exempts Facebook and others from our scrutiny and the law of the land," HUD General Counsel Paul Compton said.

In addition to taking issue with the guts of Facebook advertising, some of Facebook's targeting capabilities were startlingly blatant. It allowed housing advertisers to literally draw a red line around neighborhoods that it wanted to exclude from ads. That's too close for comfort to the "redlining" policy of the 20th century, which classified largely African-American neighborhoods as financially risky investments by drawing red lines around those neighborhoods.

According to the HUD lawsuit, "It is unlawful 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, familial status, national origin or disability, or that indicates an intention to make such a distinction."

That "cause to be made" clause is crucial: Facebook may not have been advertising housing in a discriminatory manner itself, but it allowed others to do so.

Facebook is reportedly "disappointed" with HUD's decision, but pledges to continue working with "civil rights experts."

Facebook is already facing lawsuits from the government and civil rights groups about Cambridge Analytica and the hack that affected 50 million users.