The Department of Housing and Urban Development in the US sued Facebook for violating the Fair Housing Act. The social network has "promoted, enabled and caused by its advertising platform residential discrimination," it said on Thursday in a statement.
"Facebook discriminates against people based on who they are and where they live," said Ben Carson, Minister of Housing and Urban Development. "Using a computer to restrict a person's living space can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone's face."
The ministry accuses the company of unlawfully discriminating users on the grounds of race, color, national origin, religion, marital status, gender or disability. It restricts who may view home-based ads on the platforms of Facebook and the Internet. The Group also collects extensive data about the users for advertising purposes.
The US federal law "Fair Housing Act" prohibits discrimination in housing and related services such as online advertising.
Target group Jew-haters
The American investigative platform "ProPublica" revealed in 2016 that it is possible to exclude distribution on Facebook ads to groups such as African Americans or Jews.
Facebook was also criticized for political microtargeting - the targeted approach of potential voter groups. Advertisers were thus able to target specific groups that the algorithm assigned to the category "Jew-haters". Russian fake accounts tried to incite US citizens with thousands of Facebook ads during the US presidential election. Some of the ads were aimed at African Americans.
Civil rights organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against Facebook and other companies in the fall of 2018 for discriminatory job advertisements to the Equal Opportunities and Employment Commission. Ads for male-dominated jobs would only target younger, male Facebook users. Women and non-binary persons as well as older male users would be excluded, so the charge.
In a legal settlement with civil rights organizations, Facebook announced last Tuesday that it would revise its advertising system to prevent discrimination in housing, credit and job advertisements. The distribution can no longer be filtered by age, gender and zip code.
Already last year, in response to complaints, the company removed 5,000 categories that allowed advertisers to filter religions and specific populations in detail, the tech website The Verge reports. With the restricted categories, Facebook ads could also lose their appeal to some advertisers.