Facebook bows to WA State pressure to remove “discriminatory” ad filters

WA State investigation included 20 fake ads—and FB approved all of them.

Read the whole story

 

[total.wimp]

Any evidence if the categories now banned resulted in better conversion rates?

I'm afraid a better conversion rate is not the primary goal in such cases.

That is only partially true. If you have a nightclub opening and you dogwhiste that it's for white people and you only send the ad to white people, you could get better conversion rates. Examples of dogwhistling in this case include mentioning music known to be popular with white people and showing pictures of white people.

Yes, the purpose is to be exclusionary, but the purpose of that exclusion is to make more money from the people not excluded.

 

[I am not your friend]

Solution: target those ads based on interests of those you want to target and exclude the interests of those that are not likely to buy your product. It'll take a bit more work, but you can end up with the same effect.

I don't think you get it. This is about excluding those that sellers don't want buying their products. Usually housing.

 

[Shavano]

I'm all in when hating facebook is necessary. I left facebook months ago.

But I didn't leave it because it allowed to define your ad target very granularly. I only see advantages in that.

It may look very racist, but a mexican restaurant may, and only may, want to pay half of what they pay in advertising if they only target latino people, if that's what it makes the bulk of their customers.

I left facebook because its strategy towards creating silos and echo chambers of people and the terrible effects that'll have in our society.

But hey, those targeted ads may be very cost-effective for small businesses. My wife sells baby carriers and she just targets in facebook women in an age range, with certain interests. It's creepy, but it's effective. I don't think it's sexist to not show the ads to men. She'd be spending a lot of money to show ads to people who don't care about them.

No, not sexist at all. You know that half of all parents are men, right?

 

[flish]

I'm all in when hating facebook is necessary. I left facebook months ago.

But I didn't leave it because it allowed to define your ad target very granularly. I only see advantages in that.

It may look very racist, but a mexican restaurant may, and only may, want to pay half of what they pay in advertising if they only target latino people, if that's what it makes the bulk of their customers.

I left facebook because its strategy towards creating silos and echo chambers of people and the terrible effects that'll have in our society.

But hey, those targeted ads may be very cost-effective for small businesses. My wife sells baby carriers and she just targets in facebook women in an age range, with certain interests. It's creepy, but it's effective. I don't think it's sexist to not show the ads to men. She'd be spending a lot of money to show ads to people who don't care about them.

If she would target men with the same interests as those women she might sell even more.
About 30% of those who drop off children at the nursery, school, or the day care center are men. Any business who ignores 30% of its prospective customers is not well run.

But - and it might be important - I live in Europe, France to be precise. Maybe it's different in your country.

 

[Kilkenny]

[...]whether or not specific audiences would be blocked from seeing the ads and were therefore "unaware of the opportunities in the advertisements."

Ok, so now the advertisements are "opportunities"?

When the ad is for a job opening or apartment to rent, yes, they are.

My understanding is that the complaint against Facebook was over those kinds of things, not retail sales like a lot of comments seem to be taking it.

 

[Whiner42]

Does this mean you won't be able to target ads by gender or age any more?

In protected categories (e.g. housing)? No, you can't. You never could. Facebook was ignoring the law.

Nope. You can't WRITE an ad which discriminates. But you can place (media buy) ads wherever you want. That is the correct analogy for Facebook filters.

Don't believe me (regardless of what ProPublica asserts) ? Then where is the big Civil Rights Act federal lawsuit against Facebook? If you mumble "current administration", remember that this became an issue under Obama.

 

[MarsSentinel]

Generalizing ads may result in a lower ratio of relevant to irrelevant ads per page. It is about relevance density. The limiting factor in ad service is page real estate. What this action will do is to reduce the <b>overall</b> relevance of FB ads, thus reducing the desirability of FB overall as an ad platform, by essentially requiring FB to serve irrelevant ads.

 

[PandaCheese]

Seriously how hard is it to just disable the use of filters where they could result in illegal discrimination? You can still have job ads targeting veterans or military recruiting ads that exclude them. You just can’t have housing ads that exclude them.

Has FB forgotten how to fucking code?

 

[JohnCarter17]

"It includes a pledge from Facebook to institute these ad-filter changes across all users in the United States."

Facebook is one of the few organisations that works at the world scale. Instituting these filter changes only across the United States is at most 5% of enough.

Well, yeah, they'd hate to give up all that advertising $$ in other countries. I imagine they won't change internationally until they are forced, but I'm surprised that we appear to be slightly ahead of the curve on this one.

We are ahead of the curve because a liberal state can force the issue and not just the federal government.

Which begs the question, can a different or more conservative state take the opposite tack and say its unconstitutional to force you to advertise to people you dont want to?

 

[nbs2]

I hope people that disagree with this ruling take a few seconds to review their stand.

Yes, it infringes on the freedom of Facebook to do business. No, it wouldn't be needed in a perfect world. Yes, they lead to less effective ad targeting. But these intrusive laws were put into place because of a long history of oppressive discrimination. Most people would react negatively to seeing a "whites only" sign in the window of a business, or on a housing ad. Why should it be OK for online ads?

It is already illegal though. It has been illegal for a long time to advertise housing/etc which discriminates against races, etc.

If you disagree with the original law, okay, but the only difference with Facebook is that it is has a fucking huge platform that is at least half the monopoly on such advertising.

This ruling has nothing to do with the law itself, just that Facebook isn't following it.

The challenge for Facebook is that by tailoring feeds they are a more universal newspaper. If I had a property to rent in DC want to target liberals, I placed the ad in the Post; old conservatives in the Times; young conservatives in the Examiner (although I hear they have shifted format and don't do classifieds); those with an affinity for things Hispanic in the El Tiempo; LGBT in the Blade. I might have gotten a few views from outside my target, but I focused my money on those who might be interested in my product (listing a suburban home may do well with Post and Times readers but not the Examiners).

Since Facebook appeared to be relying on affinity/interest rather than just declared demographics, I'd have thought they would be a little safer. In the end, Facebook is dealing with a unique challenge and I'm curious to see the impact this will have on their advertising dollars.

As an aside, I'm curious to know if Facebook made the national pledge of their own accord to stave off future similar allegations from other states or if it was pushed on them by WA.

I don't think they were "relying on affinity/interest" though. Yes, that's how they labeled the feature, but the actual list of "ethnic affinities" doesn't make a ton of sense unless you look at it as a listing of demographics - A Chinese restaurant might want to target people with an affinity for Asian culture, but it's a lot less likely that they'd want to target people with an affinity for "Asian American (US)".

I'm pretty sure that the "affinity" label was just a very, very weak attempt at sidestepping legal barriers by calling what they were doing something else.

I would think that the Chinese restaurant may want to target those whose interest align with events, people, and issues that pertain to the Asian American segment. Since Facebook isn't going through any sort of validation (genealogical survey, blood testing, etc.), they can only look at the types of things - events, issues, ? - that you have shown to be your interest.

In retrospect, it probably had a better payoff than the direct mailers my wife and I get. My parents are Asian and we have a very Asian last name, but she's lily white. However, because of the name, we are continually receiving mailers inviting us (especially her for some reason) to subscribe to Asian television programming and get international long distance service specifically catering to calling family certain Asian countries. If I used Facebook it would be very unlikely that we would get those types of ads served to us - she might get the programming ads based on some of the movies she likes, but I've pretty solidly embraced Western life and other than a couple aunts/uncles and a few cousins there is nobody left to call in our ancestral territories.

 

[jdale]

For housing, restaurants and other services used by the general public, I agree with this. But they should also go after those running the ads, not just Facebook.

But I also disagree with doing away with the filters. Doing away with the filters means that you will not be able to target ads at those groups specifically. If a company wished to have their ads for African hair product targeted at African Americans, they wouldn't be able to do that. Instead they would have to target everyone, so their advertising cost on FB would increase by ~87%.

The same applies to advertising prosthetic, nationalization services, Urologist, Gynecologist, Easter brunch........ Sometimes you want ads that specifically target one group with other ads targeting other groups. Adoption services may wish to have one ads targeting same sex couples showing same sex couple, while a second ad is displayed for the general public.

This approach needed a scapel, instead they used a sledge hammer.

Everything here is about explicitly excluding groups from seeing the ad. There's nothing here that suggests they are changing how you can select which groups to target. Those are different things.

For example: https://assets.propublica.org/images/ar ... bility.jpg
targets the group "men and women ages 18-65+ who live in New York". And excludes people interested in braille, the guide dogs for the blind association, wheelchair accessible van, and wheelchair ramp, or American sign language (obviously intended as a proxy to exclude the disabled).

Nothing stated in the article indicates they changed the targeting part of that, only how the exclusions will apply. That suggests it will still be possible to have targeted (or even discriminatory) ads based on targeted groups, just not by setting excluded groups.

 

[jdale]

I hope people that disagree with this ruling take a few seconds to review their stand.

Yes, it infringes on the freedom of Facebook to do business. No, it wouldn't be needed in a perfect world. Yes, they lead to less effective ad targeting. But these intrusive laws were put into place because of a long history of oppressive discrimination. Most people would react negatively to seeing a "whites only" sign in the window of a business, or on a housing ad. Why should it be OK for online ads?

It is already illegal though. It has been illegal for a long time to advertise housing/etc which discriminates against races, etc.

If you disagree with the original law, okay, but the only difference with Facebook is that it is has a fucking huge platform that is at least half the monopoly on such advertising.

This ruling has nothing to do with the law itself, just that Facebook isn't following it.

One thing I haven't seen in any coverage is whether this is something people have actually been doing. Facebook clearly permitted it, but did it happen? If it did, Facebook has clear records, and it would have been a crime. Why isn't the investigation requiring them to check and report any such illegal advertisements that occurred while the platform allowed it?

 

[ColdWetDog]

In the meantime, libre social networks such as Diaspora and Mastodon have no ads whatsoever and none of the drama associated with Facebook.

And none of the popularity. Or Traffic.

Whether that is a bug or a feature depends on one's point of view.

 

[Troglodytes troglodytes indigenus]

What's this Facebook thing anyway?

 

[waasoo]

I'm all in when hating facebook is necessary. I left facebook months ago.

But I didn't leave it because it allowed to define your ad target very granularly. I only see advantages in that.

It may look very racist, but a mexican restaurant may, and only may, want to pay half of what they pay in advertising if they only target latino people, if that's what it makes the bulk of their customers.

I left facebook because its strategy towards creating silos and echo chambers of people and the terrible effects that'll have in our society.

But hey, those targeted ads may be very cost-effective for small businesses. My wife sells baby carriers and she just targets in facebook women in an age range, with certain interests. It's creepy, but it's effective. I don't think it's sexist to not show the ads to men. She'd be spending a lot of money to show ads to people who don't care about them.

No, not sexist at all. You know that half of all parents are men, right?

It's also about who makes the buying decision. Amongst most parents in my circle, the mom makes the decision and only sometimes delegate the buying transaction (as in go and pick this model from such store) to the dads. It's ultimately a choice that the business owner makes - do I target 1000 people and attract 100 or do I target 400 people and get 80 to bite.

 

[mattofak]

I'm confused why this is Facebook's problem. Why is it not the company placing the advertisement beholden to following the law?

 

[Thegs]

If I make an ad buy on something like Sirius/XM, can I choose which channels I advertise on? Or is that the same thing? Am I discriminating if I advertise only on certain stations that are listened to by target demographics?

For that matter, are satellite radio stations themselves discriminatory, because they only play music that targets a certain demographic? If I only play Weezer and Van Halen on a radio station, am I discriminating against minorities who want to listen to other music? And by transference, anyone who advertises on my channel is discriminating against those same minorities?

That's a pretty disingenuous argument. A radio station targeting a specific demographic is in no way similar to an advertisement explicitly excluding specific demographics. For example, Although the Venus station is targeted towards women, it's not discriminatory because when Duck Sauce - Barbra Streisand comes on, I can still tune to it and enjoy. However, if my radio only notified me that my jam was now playing on Venus if I was a woman, that would be discriminatory.

 

[CaptainMcAwesome]

Targeted advertising is not discrimination. All businesses and advertisers target specific ads at specific groups. It's marketing 101. You wouldn't create an ad for a gay black nightclub and target straight white females any more than you would want to be targeting southern evangelicals with ads for Brazilian foods.

It's absurd to tell an advertiser that they have to be non discriminatory. That's the whole point of targeted advertising! Discriminating against groups your ad isn't targeted to. Youy be selling the same product to different demographics, so you make different ads for each group. Even Ars targets their ads and articles with AB testing. It would be stupid not to use targeted advertising, as you would be wasting your advertising budget. Targeted advertising is one of the great strengths of social media. Did you ever wonder why you see different ads while watching Mattlock than you do while watching Empire? Demographics, that's why.

 

[Deleted member 92645]

I'm all in when hating facebook is necessary. I left facebook months ago.

But I didn't leave it because it allowed to define your ad target very granularly. I only see advantages in that.

It may look very racist, but a mexican restaurant may, and only may, want to pay half of what they pay in advertising if they only target latino people, if that's what it makes the bulk of their customers.

I left facebook because its strategy towards creating silos and echo chambers of people and the terrible effects that'll have in our society.

But hey, those targeted ads may be very cost-effective for small businesses. My wife sells baby carriers and she just targets in facebook women in an age range, with certain interests. It's creepy, but it's effective. I don't think it's sexist to not show the ads to men. She'd be spending a lot of money to show ads to people who don't care about them.

Men can't buy baby carriers? Are you from the 50's?

 

[SneezyMcSneezerson]

How does this actually work in FB? In my head, at least, I see "targeting" and "excluding" as two different things. I'd like to think that targeting means that everyone gets the ad, but that the defined target demographics get it more frequently. Whereas excluding means that you never show the ad to certain define demographics.

Or I'm just naive and want to sit around a campfire and sing kumbaya.

 

[The DCG]

I'm all in when hating facebook is necessary. I left facebook months ago.

But I didn't leave it because it allowed to define your ad target very granularly. I only see advantages in that.

It may look very racist, but a mexican restaurant may, and only may, want to pay half of what they pay in advertising if they only target latino people, if that's what it makes the bulk of their customers.

I left facebook because its strategy towards creating silos and echo chambers of people and the terrible effects that'll have in our society.

But hey, those targeted ads may be very cost-effective for small businesses. My wife sells baby carriers and she just targets in facebook women in an age range, with certain interests. It's creepy, but it's effective. I don't think it's sexist to not show the ads to men. She'd be spending a lot of money to show ads to people who don't care about them.

No, not sexist at all. You know that half of all parents are men, right?

It's also about who makes the buying decision. Amongst most parents in my circle, the mom makes the decision and only sometimes delegate the buying transaction (as in go and pick this model from such store) to the dads. It's ultimately a choice that the business owner makes - do I target 1000 people and attract 100 or do I target 400 people and get 80 to bite.

And among my set, men are very likely to go whole hog and research safety ratings, consumer reports, teardowns and, likely, structural resistances of baby carriers before carefully choosing the very best one.

So. I see your anecdote and raise you one.

 

[The DCG]

How does this actually work in FB? In my head, at least, I see "targeting" and "excluding" as two different things. I'd like to think that targeting means that everyone gets the ad, but that the defined target demographics get it more frequently. Whereas excluding means that you never show the ad to certain define demographics.

Or I'm just naive and want to sit around a campfire and sing kumbaya.

And you're mostly correct. You can still chose to "target" your ads on FB - or anything else. You just can't use the separate "exclusions" to tag protected classes for housing, insurance, or public accommodations.

IE I can still take out a FB ad for my nerdy tchotchkes and put a include for interests in boardgaming, video gaming and anime. I just can't rent out my basement and put an exclude category in the ad for brown folks and godless heathens.

 

[Crackhead Johny]

State Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced a legally binding plan that will force Facebook to "make significant changes to its advertising platform by removing the ability of third-party advertisers to exclude ethnic and religious minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ individuals, and other protected groups from seeing their ads."

Wait a sec..
As a white guy I think I can safely speak for us all. Take our ads, take them from TV, take them from the internet, take them from out paper periodicals and roadways and give them to to these other groups who apparently have been deprived of the annoyance.

White dudes will soldier on. We will learn to get by without popups and pop behinds. We will make due with having Youtube videos start immediately. We may eventually even be able to cope with websites no longer being cluttered with blinking eye sores. We can do this!

Join with me white males 18-45, it is our time to step up and demand that Facebook do the right thing and TAKE OUR ADS!!!


On a more serious note: It seems like Bob Ferguson is arguing that minorities deserve an equal opportunity to be kicked in the crotch and then pushed down the stairs.

 

[Crackhead Johny]

I'm all in when hating facebook is necessary. I left facebook months ago.

But I didn't leave it because it allowed to define your ad target very granularly. I only see advantages in that.

It may look very racist, but a mexican restaurant may, and only may, want to pay half of what they pay in advertising if they only target latino people, if that's what it makes the bulk of their customers.

I left facebook because its strategy towards creating silos and echo chambers of people and the terrible effects that'll have in our society.

But hey, those targeted ads may be very cost-effective for small businesses. My wife sells baby carriers and she just targets in facebook women in an age range, with certain interests. It's creepy, but it's effective. I don't think it's sexist to not show the ads to men. She'd be spending a lot of money to show ads to people who don't care about them.

Men can't buy baby carriers? Are you from the 50's?

The 50s?
The Lindbergh baby was kidnapped in the 30s.

 

[PandaCheese]

I would think that the Chinese restaurant may want to target those whose interest align with events, people, and issues that pertain to the Asian American segment. Since Facebook isn't going through any sort of validation (genealogical survey, blood testing, etc.), they can only look at the types of things - events, issues, ? - that you have shown to be your interest.

So what predesignated group would you put the target audience under? If I click on an article about tariff disputes with China it doesn’t necessarily mean I’m in the mood for Chinese food.

 

[LeftCoastRusty]

As a resident of Washington, I am extremely happy with our attorney general.

 

[gijames1225]

But I also disagree with doing away with the filters. Doing away with the filters means that you will not be able to target ads at those groups specifically. If a company wished to have their ads for African hair product targeted at African Americans, they wouldn't be able to do that. Instead they would have to target everyone, so their advertising cost on FB would increase by ~87%.

Except that isn't how advertising on Facebook works. Most advertising on Facebook is run on either a Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Action (CPA) basis. So you are only paying when someone engages with the ad. If your ad is clearly advertising hair products designed for a certain ethnic group then only people interested in buying them are likely to click on that ad

Removing ethnic targeting doesn't mean people are going to suddenly start clicking on ads that they have no interest in.

It does mean though that when I load a page on FB I will have a higher chance of seeing an ad that I will never click on and that FB probably knows I will never click on but can't do anything about it.

I do freelance work for a some local churches from time to time and for a short while after a job, I will be served ads for events and revivals that I will never, ever go to. Facebook learns that and after a week or two I don't see the ads, but something like this may make it illegal, or at least risky, for them to have 'grumpy, agnostic' as a tag on my advertising profile and I may keep getting those ads long after I would otherwise.

It's not like the ads are horrible (if they were I wouldn't freelance for them), but I'd rather see an ad from IBM or Intel, all things considered.

 

[science is good]

For housing, restaurants and other services used by the general public, I agree with this. But they should also go after those running the ads, not just Facebook.

But I also disagree with doing away with the filters. Doing away with the filters means that you will not be able to target ads at those groups specifically. If a company wished to have their ads for African hair product targeted at African Americans, they wouldn't be able to do that. Instead they would have to target everyone, so their advertising cost on FB would increase by ~87%.

The same applies to advertising prosthetic, nationalization services, Urologist, Gynecologist, Easter brunch........ Sometimes you want ads that specifically target one group with other ads targeting other groups. Adoption services may wish to have one ads targeting same sex couples showing same sex couple, while a second ad is displayed for the general public.

This approach needed a scapel, instead they used a sledge hammer.

Everything here is about explicitly excluding groups from seeing the ad. There's nothing here that suggests they are changing how you can select which groups to target. Those are different things.

For example: https://assets.propublica.org/images/ar ... bility.jpg
targets the group "men and women ages 18-65+ who live in New York". And excludes people interested in braille, the guide dogs for the blind association, wheelchair accessible van, and wheelchair ramp, or American sign language (obviously intended as a proxy to exclude the disabled).

Nothing stated in the article indicates they changed the targeting part of that, only how the exclusions will apply. That suggests it will still be possible to have targeted (or even discriminatory) ads based on targeted groups, just not by setting excluded groups.

Including groups and excluding others are the same thing. If an advertiser wishes to target a specific minority, they have to exclude other groups that are not part of that minority. The filters are the same. If you wish to discriminate against a specific minority, you just include all other groups but that minority.

 

[science is good]

I'm confused why this is Facebook's problem. Why is it not the company placing the advertisement beholden to following the law?

Generally it would be. However, the fair housing act does include the advertiser.

 

[DRP]

"It includes a pledge from Facebook to institute these ad-filter changes across all users in the United States."

Facebook is one of the few organisations that works at the world scale. Instituting these filter changes only across the United States is at most 5% of enough.

Well, yeah, they'd hate to give up all that advertising $$ in other countries. I imagine they won't change internationally until they are forced, but I'm surprised that we appear to be slightly ahead of the curve on this one.

We are ahead of the curve because a liberal state can force the issue and not just the federal government.

Which begs the question, can a different or more conservative state take the opposite tack and say its unconstitutional to force you to advertise to people you dont want to?

It RAISES the question.

 

[science is good]

How does this actually work in FB? In my head, at least, I see "targeting" and "excluding" as two different things. I'd like to think that targeting means that everyone gets the ad, but that the defined target demographics get it more frequently. Whereas excluding means that you never show the ad to certain define demographics.

Or I'm just naive and want to sit around a campfire and sing kumbaya.

You just don't understand. Targeting and excluding are the exact same thing. Targeting is just excluding all groups that you don't wish to see the ad. Targeting can be used positively to send ads to groups that would generally use the service or negatively to prevent minorities from seeing the information.

 

[Crackhead Johny]

Any evidence if the categories now banned resulted in better conversion rates?

Ah... following the wheelchair link in the article makes it pretty clear. Got it

I get that there are racists out there, But I thought that discrimination against some handicapped people was financial/defensive (the ad doesn't try to avoid the deaf)? Are there actually people who hate the handicapped just for being handicapped?

You own that "no pets" building. Do you want to take the hit when someone ADA's a dog into the building and messes up your loyal allergy sensitive customers?
If you are OK with that. How about kicking our 1 family per floor (+ the entire penthouse suite) and permanently losing the rent from those apartments because you now have to spend insane cash to put in an elevator?

So I get it, I do not have to like it, but I do get why people will want to discriminate when it comes to financial ruin.

I also note the 5$ ad cost? No wonder the Russians were able to go to town. For 5$ I can advertise something on Facebook, Do millennial even know about "Happy Fun Ball"? I could turn Facebook ads into a hobby.

 

[science is good]

But I also disagree with doing away with the filters. Doing away with the filters means that you will not be able to target ads at those groups specifically. If a company wished to have their ads for African hair product targeted at African Americans, they wouldn't be able to do that. Instead they would have to target everyone, so their advertising cost on FB would increase by ~87%.

Except that isn't how advertising on Facebook works. Most advertising on Facebook is run on either a Cost Per Click (CPC) or Cost Per Action (CPA) basis. So you are only paying when someone engages with the ad. If your ad is clearly advertising hair products designed for a certain ethnic group then only people interested in buying them are likely to click on that ad

Removing ethnic targeting doesn't mean people are going to suddenly start clicking on ads that they have no interest in.

Sorry you are incorrect. I just checked my FB ad center. Payment is not on a PCP bases, but on exposure. FB asks how much you want to pay daily, and then tells you how many people that ad will reach, not the number of clicks. Perhaps you are thinking of Google, it does do PCP ads. However, even in that case the ad cost would still increase. Google adjust how many times it displays an ad based on the click rate. Ads with lower click rates get fewer displays.

 

[science is good]

Any evidence if the categories now banned resulted in better conversion rates?

Ah... following the wheelchair link in the article makes it pretty clear. Got it

I get that there are racists out there, But I thought that discrimination against some handicapped people was financial/defensive (the ad doesn't try to avoid the deaf)? Are there actually people who hate the handicapped just for being handicapped?

You own that "no pets" building. Do you want to take the hit when someone ADA's a dog into the building and messes up your loyal allergy sensitive customers?
If you are OK with that. How about kicking our 1 family per floor (+ the entire penthouse suite) and permanently losing the rent from those apartments because you now have to spend insane cash to put in an elevator?

So I get it, I do not have to like it, but I do get why people will want to discriminate when it comes to financial ruin.

I also note the 5$ ad cost? No wonder the Russians were able to go to town. For 5$ I can advertise something on Facebook, Do millennial even know about "Happy Fun Ball"? I could turn Facebook ads into a hobby.

Actually the Fair housing act only requires "Reasonable Modifications" and those expenses need to be paid by the disabled person.

http://www.accessiblehousing.org/rights ... ations.asp

 

[Golgo1]

it makes sense to target your ads to people who are more likely interested in your products. the business spends less on advertising which in turn could (in theory) lead to lower costs for the buyers

As was mentioned in previous articles, it's not about 'targeting ads to people who are not interested'
It's about 'I don't want to deal with those dirty brown people, and them homos, and queerz, durrhurrr'

If the cost of reducing discrimination is that some businesses need to advertise to MORE people, then I think that's a pretty fair trade-off.

 

[Golgo1]

Targeted advertising is not discrimination. All businesses and advertisers target specific ads at specific groups. It's marketing 101. You wouldn't create an ad for a gay black nightclub and target straight white females any more than you would want to be targeting southern evangelicals with ads for Brazilian foods.

It's absurd to tell an advertiser that they have to be non discriminatory. That's the whole point of targeted advertising! Discriminating against groups your ad isn't targeted to. Youy be selling the same product to different demographics, so you make different ads for each group. Even Ars targets their ads and articles with AB testing. It would be stupid not to use targeted advertising, as you would be wasting your advertising budget. Targeted advertising is one of the great strengths of social media. Did you ever wonder why you see different ads while watching Mattlock than you do while watching Empire? Demographics, that's why.

A/B testing is not a protected class
'Learning' a users preferences is not discriminating against an entire class of people.

Targeting Tide at viewers of Mattlock is very very different than not advertising housing to people because of their skin color.

 

[science is good]

it makes sense to target your ads to people who are more likely interested in your products. the business spends less on advertising which in turn could (in theory) lead to lower costs for the buyers

As was mentioned in previous articles, it's not about 'targeting ads to people who are not interested'
It's about 'I don't want to deal with those dirty brown people, and them homos, and queerz, durrhurrr'

If the cost of reducing discrimination is that some businesses need to advertise to MORE people, then I think that's a pretty fair trade-off.

Targeting one group is the same as excluding another. You can't do one without the other. In addition, it is not the businesses that will have to pay more, it will be the consumers that pay.

In addition, there are many legitimate reasons for targeting groups that are not discriminatory. Removing the filters is a sledge hammer approach to a issue that should have been resolved with a scalpel.

 

[jdale]

For housing, restaurants and other services used by the general public, I agree with this. But they should also go after those running the ads, not just Facebook.

But I also disagree with doing away with the filters. Doing away with the filters means that you will not be able to target ads at those groups specifically. If a company wished to have their ads for African hair product targeted at African Americans, they wouldn't be able to do that. Instead they would have to target everyone, so their advertising cost on FB would increase by ~87%.

The same applies to advertising prosthetic, nationalization services, Urologist, Gynecologist, Easter brunch........ Sometimes you want ads that specifically target one group with other ads targeting other groups. Adoption services may wish to have one ads targeting same sex couples showing same sex couple, while a second ad is displayed for the general public.

This approach needed a scapel, instead they used a sledge hammer.

Everything here is about explicitly excluding groups from seeing the ad. There's nothing here that suggests they are changing how you can select which groups to target. Those are different things.

For example: https://assets.propublica.org/images/ar ... bility.jpg
targets the group "men and women ages 18-65+ who live in New York". And excludes people interested in braille, the guide dogs for the blind association, wheelchair accessible van, and wheelchair ramp, or American sign language (obviously intended as a proxy to exclude the disabled).

Nothing stated in the article indicates they changed the targeting part of that, only how the exclusions will apply. That suggests it will still be possible to have targeted (or even discriminatory) ads based on targeted groups, just not by setting excluded groups.

Including groups and excluding others are the same thing. If an advertiser wishes to target a specific minority, they have to exclude other groups that are not part of that minority. The filters are the same. If you wish to discriminate against a specific minority, you just include all other groups but that minority.

Logically that makes sense. Ultimately, an individual either sees the ad or not. But look at the actual implementation. There is selection of targeted group(s) and separate selection of excluded groups. This is how Facebook chose to set it up. The exclusion allows you to use a larger targeting group (like men and women ages 18-65+) and then remove subgroups that you don't want (like people who are interested in braille).

Here's what the form looks like:

Separate "INCLUDE" and "EXCLUDE" fields.

Legally, targeting and exclusion ought to be regulated the same way. But that's not what's happening here. Read the announcement at https://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releas ... s-prohibit

Attorney General Bob Ferguson today announced that Facebook signed a legally binding agreement with his office to make significant changes to its advertising platform by removing the ability of third-party advertisers to exclude ethnic and religious minorities, immigrants, LGBTQ individuals and other protected groups from seeing their ads.

...

Facebook will no longer provide advertisers with tools to discriminate based on race, creed, color, national origin, veteran or military status, sexual orientation and disability status. These exclusion options will not be present on any advertisement for employment, housing, credit, insurance and/or places of public accommodation.

Boldface added for emphasis. Exclusion here refers specifically the exclusion option as provided by Facebook.

 

[science is good]

Targeted advertising is not discrimination. All businesses and advertisers target specific ads at specific groups. It's marketing 101. You wouldn't create an ad for a gay black nightclub and target straight white females any more than you would want to be targeting southern evangelicals with ads for Brazilian foods.

It's absurd to tell an advertiser that they have to be non discriminatory. That's the whole point of targeted advertising! Discriminating against groups your ad isn't targeted to. Youy be selling the same product to different demographics, so you make different ads for each group. Even Ars targets their ads and articles with AB testing. It would be stupid not to use targeted advertising, as you would be wasting your advertising budget. Targeted advertising is one of the great strengths of social media. Did you ever wonder why you see different ads while watching Mattlock than you do while watching Empire? Demographics, that's why.

A/B testing is not a protected class
'Learning' a users preferences is not discriminating against an entire class of people.

Targeting Tide at viewers of Mattlock is very very different than not advertising housing to people because of their skin color.

A/B testing would tend to favor the majority population. If you used only that, most ads would focus on white men and women.

Not advertising housing to people based on race is wrong. But there is nothing wrong about advertising makeup shade geared towards darker skin tones towards African Americans. Yet to two use the same filters.

 

[King_DuckZ]

In the meantime, libre social networks such as Diaspora and Mastodon have no ads whatsoever and none of the drama associated with Facebook.

And none of the popularity. Or Traffic.

Whether that is a bug or a feature depends on one's point of view.

For good or worse it's true they are less popular than Facebook, though I wouldn't say they are not popular at all.

In the end it all depends on what really matters to you. If you are like me and you don't want to have anything to do with all the bad practices Facebook is enacting, then you won't mind having less users around. If on the other hand all you ask your social service is to have the largest user base, then maybe ads and privacy were not your biggest concerns from the beginning.

That said, it's not like non-Facebook services are deserted either. Diaspora's been growing a lot especially in the past few months. I've been on there for more than 2 years now and I'm very happy with the experience.