Caught these two lovely older ladies enjoying a drink and watching the life of Versailles pass them by. Classy old dames. Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash [Download]

Facebook vows to stop ad discrimination against African-Americans, women and older workers

Facebook settled five lawsuits alleging its targeting tools allowed advertiserstoexclude certain groups from seeing housing and employment offers.

The settlementresolves claims that Facebook's targeting technology allowed advertiserstoexclude protected groups such as racial minorities,women and older workersfrom seeing housing, employment and credit offers.It also establishes a partnership with the National Fair Housing Alliance, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Communication Workers of America union to work collaboratively to prevent discrimination on Facebook, Instagramand Messenger.

With platforms like Facebook playing a substantial role in steering people toeconomic opportunities, Tuesday's settlement will bring changes tohow Americans can be targeted on the platform, ensuring that protected groups that already face discrimination cannot be excluded from seeing ads that can help them find a new job, anapartment or a loan,civil rights and labor organizations said.

Sandberg says Facebook is still facing an investigation by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.HUD did not respond to a request for comment.

At issue are the company's targeting tools thatpermit advertisers to pinpoint whom they want to reach by tapping into the vast amounts of data the company collects on its more than 2 billion users.

Targeting online ads to specific demographics is standard practice for internet companies, but civil rights advocates have warned that excluding users from viewinghousing, employment and credit offer ads on the basis of race, gender, age and other protected categories violates federal and state civil rights laws.

And the company has removed thousands of categories that could be used to target protected classes such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and religion.

Right now, advertisers placing housing, employment and credit ads can target users of Facebook, Instagram and Messenger based on thousands of interests.

Anyone who wants to run these ads will not be allowed to target by age, gender or zip code.Facebook is also building a new tool that will allow users to search for and view all current housing ads throughout the U.S.

After Murphy, the Congressional Black Caucus and others raised concerns about how housing, employment and credit ads target users, Facebook says it engagedthe civil rights law firm of Relman, Dane & Colfaxto review its ad tools.

Original article
Author: Usatoday

USA TODAY delivers current local and national news, sports, entertainment, finance, technology, and more through award-winning journalism, photos, videos and VR.

Usatoday has recently written 11 articles on similar topics including :
  1. "Facebook is also removing fan pages, and groups affiliated with these individuals: Paul Nehlen, Paul Joseph Watson, Laura Loomer and others". (May 3, 2019)
  2. "Despite escalating pressure ahead of the 2020 election, Facebook reaffirmed its freewheeling policy on political ads Thursday, saying it wont ban them, wont fact-check them and wont limit how they can be targeted to specific groups of people. (Jan". (January 10, 2020)
  3. "“Curious if there are any talks of striking". (February 20, 2019)
  4. "Just over a week since a "routine test" took the social networking giant offline, Facebook and Instagram both went down for many users early Tuesday". (November 20, 2018)
  5. "The social media giant said it has resolved the issue, which affected millions of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users starting Wednesday". (March 14, 2019)
  6. "Japan's Emperor Akihito abdicates, Mark Zuckerberg addresses Facebook's future and more of Tuesday's news to know". (April 30, 2019)
  7. "Instagram and Facebook apps are suffering outages for some users in the United States and Europe. WhatsApp users are also seeing issues". (July 3, 2019)
  8. "Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook, said the social networking giant should be broken up in an op-ed on The New York Times". (May 9, 2019)
  9. "Former Facebook employee Mark Luckie says the company disenfranchises black people on the platform and inside the company". (November 27, 2018)
  10. "One police officer posted that Ocasio-Cortez was a "vile idiot" who should be shot. The other police officer liked that Facebook post". (July 23, 2019)
  11. "Facebook is considering restrictions on who can livestream on the social network following shootings at two New Zealand mosques, Sheryl Sandberg said". (March 29, 2019)
Posted on  , , ,