Facebook Halting Ads That Target, Exclude Races

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After receiving a ton of backlash over the discovery that Facebook allowed advertisers to exclude specific racial and ethnic groups when placing ads for housing, credit and employment, the company has done a 180 saying that they will no longer allow that to happen.

Facebook has been under fire from federal lawmakers for allowing advertisers to exclude racial and ethnic groups when placing housing ads such as an apartment for rent or a house for sale. Pro Publica brought the ability to light when it placed an ad for a housing-related event that excluded African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanics. The Department of Housing and Urban Development, the federal agency that enforces fair housing laws, held discussions with Facebook to address "serious concerns" about the practice.
 
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The antics of fakebook never cease to amaze. I wonder if this will make the facebook news feed.
 
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I'm wondering how they were able to do this in the first place in order to have to stop doing it. I mean, it doesn't surprise me. I never put anything past marketeers, but one would think large tech companies might play things a tiny bit smarter. Obviously not though. Push it until it's a problem!
 
I think it is working. I'm starting to see ads for Fisher Investments ... "for high net worth accounts of 500K". LOL. (I have to pay off some debt first before I have a net worth anywhere near that.)
 
They tried to sell me introductions to "hot Brazilian singles in your area", pest control, and craft beer all in one amazing ad sidebar once. They thought if I had those three things, I'd be set.

At first I was mad. Then I realized they may have been right.
 
Ah. The initial report I didn't know it mentioned housing, credit and employment. Fuck no, those shouldn't be allowed. What were they thinking?

Have money to burn on lawsuits, maybe?

Showing different ads for different ethnicity is fine. Just not those three categories. There's laws against that.
 
Will this move help increase or decrease the sale of Timberland boots?
 
Well this would be under racism, bigotry, so how come facebook users aren't out in the streets protesting with their brothers and sisters who are protesting over the same thing since the night of Nov 8.
 
I have a perfect ad blocker for facebook. It's free and easy to use and solves a MULTITUDE of Facebook problems in one go. You only need one step to activate it.

Step 1: Delete your Facebook account. There, done.
 
snicker I read the Congressional Black Caucus,... and realized it has nothing to do with helping anyone and simply proving they can make people jump though hoops... my guess is that all the company did was try to target their audience by only showing what they thought people wanted to see which is not actually illegal unless you say pay actors to walk through a neighborhood so you can sell real estates to people that would not be caught dead in that neighbor hood. I was living the little armenian neighborhood of los angles, due to the los angles riots they were grandfathered into the law so that to buy property there you have to be armenian or greek descent... anyway I was walking down the street and some black woman screams at the realtor showing her a house that she was told this was a black neighborhood... despite being about sixty percent illegal Mexican and mix of people with bronze skin or skin that was tanned to bronze, including an korean family that made really good chesesteaks... but there was a move to re-district the voters so that neighborhoods that say had ten people living in them would get more of the electoral college votes because there was fifty of those ten person neighborhoods in a city that spans eight square miles while areas that say had a hundred thousand people of different ethic back grounds got less of the percent of electoral votes because of dirty politics. It is things like this where we had a culture that valued hard work and sense of accomplishment to people who come from a foreign country and simply want a hand out and if you ask why, they scream you are racist. For perspective I was born in pa to a British mother and Norwegian father, neither had American citizenship so both got deported and I got raised in the usa by four or five different families. I had my baby book until I gave it to one my girl friends who was having problems with being adopted. Danille some how ended up in more trouble over it but the point is really that america has plenty of skilled labor out of work because we are too busy trying to feed foreigners sqatting on us soil than be mean to them... I would rather have been raised by people who saw me as more than a pay day but I some how survived, because when I was growing up teachers still cared there were role models I could look to that belived in ethics and moralities above and beyond what is in it for me... pretty sure it is just the black pathers trying to create a race war some they can move a bunch of slaves from the ivory coast where they still keep slaves, but are too stupid to realize that if they some how manage to trick the decent people into killing each other off... there are a lot of groups all over the world that would laugh and wipe them out since they would not be protected by agreements the usa has in place.
 
Maybe while they're at it, they can tag all the bullshit news articles I read on a daily basis based on a rating of how questionable their sources are.
 
J3RK said:
I'm wondering how they were able to do this in the first place in order to have to stop doing it. I mean, it doesn't surprise me. I never put anything past marketeers, but one would think large tech companies might play things a tiny bit smarter. Obviously not though. Push it until it's a problem!
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Targeting and excluding adds to people based on race, sex, age, etc. just makes sense. People are different and are into different things. And yes, race, sex, age, and many other traits can tell you about what these people might be interested in. The advertiser is making an assumption based on race, however the assumption bears weight. No one is being discriminated against, advertisers are just choosing who they spend their money advertising to, based on whether they think those groups will be interested in their product. Race does help in making that decision.
Facebook ads will just get stupider over this.
 
Can I finally get an ad for Soul Glo made special for me?!

200x200px-ZC-b8184e2d_soul-glo-o10.gif
 
Gorankar said:
Targeting and excluding adds to people based on race, sex, age, etc. just makes sense. People are different and are into different things. And yes, race, sex, age, and many other traits can tell you about what these people might be interested in. The advertiser is making an assumption based on race, however the assumption bears weight. No one is being discriminated against, advertisers are just choosing who they spend their money advertising to, based on whether they think those groups will be interested in their product. Race does help in making that decision.
Facebook ads will just get stupider over this.
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I'm with you. Different people are in fact different. It does make sense to cater to people in different ways. I do think it should be limited a bit in depth though. I don't use Facebook, so I'm not hit with this as directly as some people might be though. However, I do get a lot of ads for electronic components, music and audio equipment, computer parts, and occasionally high end liquor. So, the places that do tend to target me seem to be just about spot on. :D
 
J3RK said:
I'm with you. Different people are in fact different. It does make sense to cater to people in different ways. I do think it should be limited a bit in depth though. I don't use Facebook, so I'm not hit with this as directly as some people might be though. However, I do get a lot of ads for electronic components, music and audio equipment, computer parts, and occasionally high end liquor. So, the places that do tend to target me seem to be just about spot on. :D
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I don't get any ads on anything because I ad block. I recommend.
 
B00nie said:
I don't get any ads on anything because I ad block. I recommend.
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I have adblock built into my mind. :D Seriously though, I just don't pay any attention to them. Sure they kinda pop up in Google results, show on the side-bars of certain sites, but unless some stupid full-page "X to close" sort of thing happens, I don't even really care. I just tune it out. It's almost more trouble to acquire, maintain, tweak ad blocking to my liking than just ignore them. I have just a handful of favorite (regularly visited) sites, and all of them are pretty tame ad-wise. Every once in a while I'll hit a site that has something obnoxious, but typically not a problem.
 
J3RK said:
I have adblock built into my mind. :D Seriously though, I just don't pay any attention to them. Sure they kinda pop up in Google results, show on the side-bars of certain sites, but unless some stupid full-page "X to close" sort of thing happens, I don't even really care. I just tune it out. It's almost more trouble to acquire, maintain, tweak ad blocking to my liking than just ignore them. I have just a handful of favorite (regularly visited) sites, and all of them are pretty tame ad-wise. Every once in a while I'll hit a site that has something obnoxious, but typically not a problem.
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I don't understand what tweaking you're talking about. Ad-blockers have ready configured lists that block 99,9% of ads. The odd couple that pass through get caught by noscript.
 
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