Facebook agreed to overhaul its lucrative targeted advertising system to settle accusations that landlords, lenders and employers use the platform to discriminate against African Americans, women, seniors, people with disabilities and others.
The far-reaching settlement compels Facebook to withhold a wide array of detailed demographic information — including ZIP codes, gender and age — from advertisers when they market housing, credit and job opportunities.Although the settlement is unlikely to deal a major blow to Facebook’s bottom line, the change represents a significant shift for a company that has built one of the most successful advertising platforms in history.
Tuesday’s announcement will require a major overhaul of Facebook’s software, and could make the platform less valuable to certain advertisers. Many companies use Facebook to recruit workers. “This type of discrimination that we thought was stamped out in the ’60s and ’70s by our civil rights laws should not be given a new life in the digital era,” said Galen Sherwin, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU. “This settlement establishes that the web is not a civil-rights-free zone.”
Facebook used terms such as “English as a second language,” “disabled parking permit,” or “Telemundo” — which advocates argue are proxies for protected categories of people. Tuesday’s announcement goes much further. The new advertising platform will introduce technological barriers to companies promoting housing, employment and credit ads from significantly restricting their intended audience.
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