The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is charging Facebook with violating the Fair Housing Act for allegedly delivering housing-related ads to users in a discriminatory fashion.
As such, the social media giant is accused of violating federal law by “encouraging, enabling and causing” housing discrimination through its advertising platform.
“Facebook is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live,” Ben Carson, secretary of HUD, says 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.”
HUD filed a formal complaint against Facebook last August, claiming the company allows landlords and people selling homes to use its advertising platform to “engage in housing discrimination.”
The complaint said advertisers can dictate who sees housing-related ads based on race, religion, sex, disability and other characteristics.
HUD’s action against Facebook is the result of an investigation that began in August. That investigation revealed that Facebook had enabled advertisers to exclude people whom it classified as parents; non-American-born; non-Christian; interested in accessibility; interested in Hispanic culture; or a wide variety of other interests that closely align with the Fair Housing Act’s protected classes, HUD says in a release.
HUD is also charging that Facebook enabled advertisers to exclude people based upon their neighborhood by drawing a red line around those neighborhoods on a map.
Facebook also allegedly gave advertisers the option of showing ads only to men or only to women, HUD says in a statement.
HUD further asserts that Facebook uses the protected characteristics of people to determine who will view ads regardless of whether an advertiser wants to reach a broad or narrow audience.
The agency claims Facebook combines data it collects about user attributes and behavior with data it obtains about user behavior on other websites and in the non-digital world.
Facebook then allegedly uses machine learning and other prediction techniques to classify and group users to project each user’s likely response to a given ad, and in doing so, may recreate groupings defined by their protected class.
HUD asserts that by grouping users who have similar attributes and behaviors (unrelated to housing) and presuming a shared interest or disinterest in housing-related advertisements, Facebook’s mechanisms function just like an advertiser that intentionally targets or excludes users based on their protected class.
HUD’s charge requests that the social media giant cease and desist from the practice of providing targeted advertising delivery that enables advertisers to engage in discriminatory practices.
It also seeks appropriate relief for the harm Facebook caused and continues to cause to users, however, what form that relief might come in is difficult to determine at this stage.
In August 2018, the Department of Justice, joined by HUD, filed a statement of interest in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) on behalf of a number of private litigants challenging Facebook’s advertising platform.
HUD’s charge against Facebook will be heard by a U.S. Administrative Law Judge.