Facebook lets advertisers exclude users by race
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Regardless of specific laws and statutes this may violate, it's an affront to every part of the progress we've made as a species. In my country, South Africa, this tool seems to be literally against the constitutional principles (Chapter 2, ss 9, 3-4).
Regardless of moral or legal questions even, do we not need to query what the societal cost is of allowing corporations to be facile and duplicitous, automatically, at the scale of enterprises like Facebook?
If I'm a white male, why would I want to see advertisements for skincare products designed for African-American women?
The advertisers would lose money as well, because instead of advertising to me, they could advertise it to someone that has a higher chance of clicking/buying.
I also find it a little hypocritical that users regularly use adblock toward websites they dislike (could be political or racial)..and this is allowed.
If those that are most likely to purchase my product are of a certain race, age, or location I am going to focus my resources there.
The ad content may be neutral, but the person performing the act of advertisement is racist.
How about a newspaper ad that tells people to tell their white friends about some great housing? Technically those people down the chain are performing non-racist advertisements, but only to their white friends.
You couldn't tell a bunch of people this, so why could you tell a newspaper staffer to do this?
I think that there are likely to be some products/services that would benefit from advertising based on race. Most products/services would likely benefit more from advertising based on culture though (since a single race can comprise of many cultures).
It shouldn't really be up to you to decide.
It'll be interesting to see if Facebook is financially liable for discrimination in ads. Unlike the NYT, Facebook built the tools to discriminate. Filtering the ads also gives an advantage to NYT (and Youtube, etc..) by raising the markets barrier to entry.
Here's how information leaks: if I want to know which people have an affinity with (e.g.) cats, I could target these users on facebook, and then use an advertisement where I sell (e.g.) coffee. Now, as a seller, I know if people click on the coffee link, these people are likely to be cat lovers.
So FB cannot claim that the information stays within their premises.
Of course the same holds for Google and others.
Hence all targeted advertisements should be made illegal until this problem is fixed. Good luck! :)
The advertisement itself(as seen by the public) does not indicate "any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, or national origin."
Rather, who is shown the advertisement is limited. You can argue that targeted advertising should be illegal in certain circumstances, but AFAIK there are currently no laws governing it.
I might of course disagree with that assessment, but I would defer to a lawyer to make a case why it wouldn't be illegal.
I don't find that a very convincing legal assessment and the article seems to assume that it is violating the act due to that statement with no proof or reasoning backing it up.
Edit: To me, this is no different from choosing to mail advertisements to various zip codes or neighborhoods based on demographics.
But tech people don't have blind spots or problems when it comes to issues like race, nope, no sir.