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Comment by geoduck14 | Hacker News Reader

>Also, is advertising to (demographic) most likely to buy your service really exclusion/discrimination?

Hi! I work at a bank, that specializes in Credit Cards. I take a bunch of mandated training. The answer to your question is a

RESOUNDING YES

It is DEFINITELY discrimination for me to exclude Black people from lending money, or from OFFERING (aka advertising) to lend money. It is discrimination for me to offer different rates to Seniors than non seniors. It is discrimination for me to offer different TYPES (think: low APR with annual fee) of credit cards to poor people.

I'm not sure if FB should be in trouble, but the credit card issuer will have to explain this to the regulators.

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So if I choose not to advertise a credit product during NBA games which have a high black audience, but advertise during soccer games high white viewership, is that discrimination?

I think you certainly correct if someone applies directly excluding them on race is not only violation of law, but a jerk move. This seems more like it has to do with intention than actual execution.

I have NO idea! I know some financial institutions advertise (and sponsor) really big sport events with viewership that ranges in the 10s of millions. It is possible there is a distinction between "We are a company, remember our logo" and "we are a company, use our credit card".

I do know that proxy variables are just as bad as discrimination variables. So, if I approve based on zip code, and zip code is highly correlated with a protected class - that is not legal (think: red lining practices).

But it gets tricky. If black people use pay day lenders, can I decline because I see pay day lenders on your credit history? Not directly, but I can decline if I see lots of "open lines of credit" or "delinquent loans".

In my area, we also go back over our variables to look for "accidentally discrimination" e.g. no one would expect that: high income, large down payment, expensive car loan, commission based income would correlate with a protected class - but maybe it does, so we better check!

Isn’t discriminating by age okay in insurance policies?

Life insurance is higher for older people. Drivers insurance is higher for younger people as well as for men, no?

So it seems there are exceptions.

discriminating by age is ok in the workplace. only 40+ is a protected class in the US.

Yes, but not for reason of age alone.

Creditworthiness is judged based on history, not on age or race etc. I.e. egalitarianism.

If your history is bad, lower limit etc.

I dunno. Life insurance is heavily weighted for age, all other things being equal.

It’s not discrimination — pricing is based on cost, actuarial risk in the case of life insurance. There are even pooled models where otherwise too risky people can get insurance.

Discrimination comes in when you make decisions or steer business based on a protected attribute. If you do a mailing and exclude ethnic Jewish names, that’s discrimination. If you advertise in a catholic church bulletin, but not at a synagogue, that isn’t.

I just applied for private life insurance. I do think it's possible what this industry does as a matter of standard practice probably is discrimination, but they legitimize it through technocratic means. They'll say something like there's an average risk profile that rises over time with age. The way they further meat this out is by intrusively inspecting open medical history and repeating pedantic questions to you about that medical history. If you pass the pedantic questions, you get a lower rate based on demonstrated medical history.

So, I think my perception would be a little bit of both.

How is any advertising for credit products legal, then? Each TV channel you might advertise on will have known-to-you differences in how often particular demographics will view it, which in principle means that you're excluding someone. While sure, a 35 year old professional might be watching soap operas at 1pm on a Wednesday, it's far more likely to be a senior, so advertising then excludes the non-retired demographic.

Good question! Discrimination can pop up at many points throughout the on boarding process, so it is important that you check who your people are often and at multiple check points.

At the point of advertising, we check things like: demographics of who viewed the add (sometimes we have to run ADDITIONAL targeted adds to balance out an initial add placement), demographics of who "clicked" to our website, demographics of who applied

Are all possible places to monitor. Also, we get to use FUN MATH!

That sounds like something maybe 0.1% of credit card issuers actually do.

Hmmm... ok. The antidote I shared is when I was hanging out with the mortgage folks. I assumed it was applied to the credit card division. It is surely possible, and an acceptable solution.

The mortgage bit is the key there. Red-lining started out as a phenomena in mortgage offerings, so it makes sense that they'd be going over and above to keep their noses clean. Credit cards as a general thing though? Nah. Though I'd be stoked to see that change in the years to come.

> It is discrimination for me to offer different rates to Seniors than non seniors. It is discrimination for me to offer different TYPES (think: low APR with annual fee) of credit cards to poor people.

Accounts are often free to young people(<26)in Belgium, as well as in other European countries. Is that not discrimination?

A couple of points:

I'm an American, with experience in the US

Illegal Discrimination is determined by the jurisdiction you are in. Belgium will have different laws than than the US

Laws typically PROTECT vulnerable populations. Young people might be correlated with poor and uninformed, and there by entitled to protections. Likewise, Seniors may also correlate with underemployed and mentally impaired, and there by entitled to protections.

Note also that there is an important difference between the two scenarios:

1) 2 IDENTICAL products, but one is FREE 2) 2 SIMILAR products, but one exchanges convenience for cost

In the first example (similar to your example), one is DEFINITELY better (the free one), and CAN be targeted to people- because it is DEFINITELY better

In the first example (similar to my credit card), neither is DEFINITELY better than the other - it is a little more complex! And we have a higher burden showing that it is OK to offer JUST one to a protected class.

> or from OFFERING (aka advertising) to lend money.

Nearly every financial "advertising" I see/hear has "this is not an offer to lend" disclaimer on it. I can't see that 'advertising===offering'???

"This is not an offer to lend" is a disclaimer that the ad isn't itself an offer to extend credit to whoever happens to see it - you have to apply and be approved first and they don't guaranteed they will offer you any lending products at all. It's usually followed up by language like "subject to credit approval."

sure, but the OP was suggesting that "advertising" was the same as "offering" to anyone who happens to see the ad (in context of discrimination) ... doesn't seem to be usable.

How do we begin to dismantle these systems?

The idea that a law or regulation would prevent you from advertising based on demographics is absurd, and we should build a future without these kinds of insane dependencies.

There are protected classes by law. If anything the trend has been to extend them.

Advertising is a bit funny of course. If we're talking about magazine advertising, for example, there's nothing keeping you from advertising in a magazine that's overwhelmingly read by women, wealthy white guys, or black people. However, the law frowns on explicitly targeting (or excluding) a protected class.

I don't think we should dismantle them. I agree with others in this thread that not offering an option is exclusion. Because excluding people from important things like banking or housing leads to a worse society. And because people have excluded [group] before in an attempt to limit the reasonable risk of doing business in society. Laws are required to prevent that kinda behavior.

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