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Comment by dsr_ | Hacker News Reader

No, if you get a radio license and so something illegal with it, that's your fault, and the FCC is the authority that can punish you for it.

In this case, just like Facebook.

Your responsibility, handed to you with the license, is to not do illegal things, even if people want to pay you money to do it. It's especially bad if you build an automated system that has options for people to do illegal things, since you are in charge of that. The FCC may or may not go after the people who bought the illegal-thing-service from you, but they will definitely go after you.

And the correct solution is to not have the options open in the first place. "Would you like to place an ad? Is it for real estate or housing in any way? OK, the following advertising options are open to you, but others have been turned off in order to comply with the law."

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I'm not sure I agree. If someone buys a radio to transmit illegally, the advertising platform they viewed the ad for the radio on isn't liable, nor is the place they bought it from, nor is the manufacturer or importer. (There is quite the controversy around people buying Baofeng radios to transmit illegally. Amazon is happy to sell you one, no questions asked.)

This extends to many areas. Gun manufacturers aren't liable when someone goes on a shooting spree with a gun, for example.

I feel like this is a slippery slope. Facebook lets anyone advertise anything, and gives everyone the same targeting tools. If you use them illegally, that should be on you, not on Facebook. Just like how you can use a screwdriver to screw in screws, or to go around stabbing people with it. The difference is that screwdrivers are a well-understood tool, whereas ad targeting tools are new and scary.

If you want to make advertising illegal, I'm fine with that, but good luck.

I can agree with you if the ad network publishes a transparency report that is publicly available and includes all ad activity on its network. I doubt anyone will agree to this. They'll cite privacy and security and blah blah.

Just to be clear, we're talking about targeted advertising. I don't know how we can fix this issue. Maybe Facebook can ask tell type of an ad something is?

How about: it’s the responsibility of people posting ads on Facebook to follow the laws that apply to them.

I don’t see why it’s Facebook’s responsibility to police advertising for housing and control how it’s targeted. If advertisers use illegal targeting then that should be on them.

The people publishing these ads are literally paying Facebook to do so. IANAL but as far as I know it's not legal to profit off illegal activity. Facebook are, themselves, breaking the law here.

What law specifically makes it illegal "to profit off illegal activity"?

That sounds incredibly broad and impossible to to avoid.

I imagine you'd be considered an accessory to the act in question. There are also laws like this [1], although they don't apply to this situation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_Sam_law

Why does it always have to be either-or. Can't we all agree that Facebook also has some responsibility to prevent abuse? I'm not saying they have to make sure no one can ever break a law using their platform. But once they become aware people are abusing it to do so, how can you say it's fine for them to ignore it. This seems to be the case, as far as i understand that filing. That's how you end with government having to impose regulation. I'd prefer Facebook willingly work with law enforcement or/and their clients to make sure forced intervention won't be necessary.

Exactly, whichever is most effective. The aim of the law is primarily to protect against descrimination, not to blame a certain party. Both the publishers and the buyers are at fault but whichever changes get the problem fixed seems the best way to go.

Getting Facebook to disable some targeting option seems like a much easier route than going after each ad buyer. Targeting the publisher makes sense because they are in the best position to enforce policies on their platform and stop the descriminatory practice at a larger scale.

but it's not really what's happening here. If a gun manufacturer sells you a gun where it is legal to sell gun, then they are neither doing something illegal, nor directly giving you tools to do something illegal. They can't control what you will do with the gun, but they also don't tell you where it's safe to go kill people with it, and mostly give you safety instructions.

Here it is the same thing with Facebook. If they sell you a platform for advertising, they might not be able to control 100% of the content of the ads, some bad stuff might slip. But they should NOT offer you tools to publish illegal ads. In that case, being able to filter ads by race is illegal, and it's on them to offer this option. It would be a different story if there was no option and a publisher just wrote "no people of <race>".

The law in question specifically makes the publisher liable. (It has been applied to newspapers in the past.)

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