Tech has changed so you can do the targeting. You are violating the spirit of the law. The point is if you make sure blacks, Mexicans, or women can't see your ad you are trying to exclude them.

> You are violating the spirit of the law.

No.

The spirit of the law is to prohibit public racial propaganda. The spirit of the law is NOT about hunting down private biases.

I have no idea what you’re talking about with the “propaganda”, but everything you need to know is right there in the announcement: “The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in housing transactions including print and online advertisement on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, or familial status. HUD's Secretary-initiated complaint follows the Department's investigation into Facebook's advertising platform which includes targeting tools that enable advertisers to filter prospective tenants or homebuyers based on these protected classes.”

So both the spirit and letter of the law forbid discrimination, and they are arguing that Facebook enables illegal discrimination on their platform.

"Advertising housing" is NOT "housing transaction". Transaction happens when landlord and renter signing renting agreement.

>>(c) 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, or an intention to make any such preference, limitation, or discrimination.

Answer me this. How on Facebook you would expect an excluded person to be able to know about the sale?

They wouldn't. The housing listing doesn't exist for them.

How do you see this as fair?!

I am blown away by all the casual racism all throughout this thread.

https://www.craigslist.org/about/FHA

Mind you, I do think that ads targeted only to e.g. certain races are crappy and probably violate the law, but that certainly isn't as obvious from the links people are providing.

Its a hard truth to swallow.

The rest of this isn't directed just at you astura.

If this was some random Facebook or 4chan comment would you be so quick to come to that rationalization?

I feel we like to think the individuals we associate with on HN are like minded. To admit they aren't is almost a personal affront. To keep the disillusion going we must rationalize and make up excuses for them or how they behave.

But sometimes a duck is a duck.

I too am confused how targeting may be illegal under a law that forbids discrimination and discriminating content of ads - I am not familiar with the law. Lack of knowledge/understanding doesn’t make me “racist”.

Some other comments in this inflammatory thread helped me get the point, but your attacks on everybody as racists-by-defaul are deeply bigoted and insulting.

Thinking about it, people who disagree with me by thinking that it is okay to deny housing based on race is by definition racist, no? The fact is clearly spelled out in law.

I'm not even saying someone disagrees with me. Where do you see that? I stated that there is casual racism in this thread.

I understand there is confusion in the law regarding targeting specifically. But stand back and take a look at the bigger picture of what the technology we create could allow. Like other real self proclaimed proud racists who would only use the service without understanding how it works.

It's not that it's targeting. It's not allowing those your not targeting to be part of the open market.

If you are something, someone calling it out is not an attack or bigotry. Sometimes the truth hurts.

I still don't believe that merely providing the option to create potentially discriminatory ads is a problem for Facebook, since the same options have perfectly valid usage. It should be the landlord's responsibility to use them correctly.

Who did I accuse of racism? I stated people in the thread are being casually racist but didn't name any names.

Haven't we been learning as developers or operators that it's better to put processes and systems in place to prevent human error opposed to relying on human judgement alone? Why the slack with this issue?

Would you also require natural language processing to detect illegal text?

> § 109.25 Selective use of advertising media or content.

> The selective use of advertising media or content when particular combinations thereof are used exclusively with respect to various housing developments or sites can lead to discriminatory results and may indicate a violation of the Fair Housing Act. For example, the use of English language media alone or the exclusive use of media catering to the majority population in an area, when, in such area, there are also available non-English language or other minority media, may have discriminatory impact. Similarly, the selective use of human models in advertisements may have discriminatory impact. The following are examples of the selective use of advertisements which may be discriminatory:

> (a) Selective geographic advertisements. Such selective use may involve the strategic placement of billboards; brochure advertisements distributed within a limited geographic area by hand or in the mail; advertising in particular geographic coverage editions of major metropolitan newspapers or in newspapers of limited circulation which are mainly advertising vehicles for reaching a particular segment of the community; or displays or announcements available only in selected sales offices.

> (b) Selective use of equal opportunity slogan or logo. When placing advertisements, such selective use may involve placing the equal housing opportunity slogan or logo in advertising reaching some geographic areas, but not others, or with respect to some properties but not others.

> (c) Selective use of human models when conducting an advertising campaign. Selective advertising may involve an advertising campaign using human models primarily in media that cater to one racial or national origin segment of the population without a complementary advertising campaign that is directed at other groups. Another example may involve use of racially mixed models by a developer to advertise one development and not others. Similar care must be exercised in advertising in publications or other media directed at one particular sex, or at persons without children. Such selective advertising may involve the use of human models of members of only one sex, or of adults only, in displays, photographs or drawings to indicate preferences for one sex or the other, or for adults to the exclusion of children.

Targeted advertising was already a thing when these regulations were written decades ago; internet advertising is just a difference in scale and cost.

However, what FB is doing is...that young couple reads the magazine and can't see the ad, but a senior citizen can.

IANAL...and for what it's worth there's a similar lawsuit for age discrimination for job hiring. Post ads only for certain age target.

Yes. Which is a good thing, because it saves time both to renters and landlords.

It also does not offend anyone, because there is no public age discrimination wording in the ad.

The most important part for our discussion here: there is no public promotion of age superiority in these ads. Therefore this Fair_Housing_Act does NOT apply.

When it comes to protected classes, it's not 'saving time' because a landlord acting legally is equally likely to rent to either group.