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Comment by astura | Hacker News Reader

This is a very easy thing to avoid though:

if (ad target == anything to do with housing) {disable options to exclude ethnic affinity [and a bunch of other things]}

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It's not that easy, because there are many proxies that correlate with protected categories. For instance, take a look at the greater DC area with census data on race. You can easily target regions without explicitly using race.

Compliance.

If they lock down microtargetting for housing related ads and have some code to flag housing ads posted in different categories they become compliant with the law. Nobody says they have to be 100% perfect to be compliment.

Sure, but if you think the law serves a purpose, then one may ask whether being technically compliant is success.

It's a start. They weren't even doing that.

Your use of the phrase "it's a start" suggests that further restrictions will follow.

No, it implies that they at least appeared to be trying, even if it wasn’t very effective.

As it is they don’t seem to have put in the smallest possible effort to comply and decided to ignore the law completely.

Is it more important that they "appear[] to be trying" than that the policy imposed on them actually achieve the ostensible policy goal?

For their legal case? I’d think so. It looks way better that you were trying to do something and weren’t very effective than that you decided not to bother.

For their need to comply? No. They have to follow ineffective laws as long as they’re on the books.

Where did people jump to the conclusion that following the law is incompatible with the goal of the law? Saying that it might be insufficient is a different matter.

You're responding to me as though I was providing Facebook's defense for not complying. I wasn't. I was saying that if Facebook technically complies, that isn't necessarily sufficient.

"if you think the law serves a purpose" Surely it is not controversial here to suggest that anti-discrimination laws serve a purpose and therefore if someone finds a loophole that does not mean it is just fine?

I was just reading in Jalopnik about how Toyota added reinforcement to their minivan to deal with small offset driver's side impacts, and then when a test for a similar passenger side impact was done, surprise surprise, there was no symmetric reinforcement on that side!

It's not that easy

If a small town newspaper with a staff of 30 can do it, Facebook has both the staff and resources to do the same.

If it cannot, or will not, it should not take advertisements for sectors that are regulated.

But small town newspapers are endangered by those costs! Facebook only makes about $6 ARPU. Automating the crap out of everything is what enables them to exist.

cry me a fucking river, Facebook.

Then it can't exist. Worse things could befall the world.

Elaborating a bit on the sibling comments, Facebook has no "right" to exist as a business. If the only reason it can exist is by ignoring laws with which other businesses are able to comply, it should be shut down (or alternately, forced to obey those laws and then "corrected" out of business by the market).

>Automating the crap out of everything is what enables them to exist.

If they're too big to be accountable then maybe they shouldn't exist.

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