Comment by kryogen1c | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kryogen1c | Hacker News Reader

This complaint seems like its shooting itself in the foot - discrimination isn't inherently bad. When you hire, you discriminate based on ability. When you date, you discriminate in a number of ways like beauty, personality, etc. If you're selling ads for wheelchairs you want to discriminate for people with disabilities. If your houses aren't wheelchair accessible, you want your ads to discriminate against people with disabilities. If there are "majority-minority zip codes" then maybe advertising against the demographic is a waste of your time and money.

The idea that we should operate without discrimination is a toothless platitude with little bearing on reality. It is not Facebooks responsibility to change reality because they are able to accurately quantify and qualify it's existence, and sell ads based on their findings.

It is, however, Facebook's obligation to abide by the law, particularly 50 year old laws with decades of settled case law.

The law is against publishing discriminatory ads (discriminatory wordings that encouraged racial hate).

Facebook ad audience filtering -- is a very different tool.

The law finds the combination of "housing ad" and "discriminatory targeting" to be illegal. You can do discriminatory targeting when you're selling wheelchairs or other products. You can post housing ads. You just can't do both.

That’s a straw man.

This case isn’t “no one can discriminate with ads”. It’s “no one can discriminate ILLEGALY with THIS TYPE of ad”.

> When you hire, you discriminate based on ability

Yes, but not on race, gender, income, sexual orientation, etc.

The day 'discrimination' happens to you, you'll sing a different tune.

You might want to look into what the ADA requires about building accommodations for handicapped accessibility. Hint: You aren't compliant just by throwing up your hands and saying "We aren't accessible, don't bother", especially not for commercial real estate. I.e. you can't simply discriminate against handicapped people, which is the problem that necessitated the passing of the law in the first place.

Even residential real estate has to follow a bunch of codes though, like secure railings on all stairways for starters.

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