Incident 93: HUD charges Facebook with enabling housing discrimination
Entities
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CSET Taxonomy Classifications
Taxonomy DetailsFull Description
In March 2019, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) charged Facebook with violating the Fair Housing Act. HUD claims the platform’s ad-targeting options enabled advertisers to illegally restrict the housing options presented to marginalized groups. In a similar case brought by a group of civil rights groups, Facebook reached a settlement and agreed to several changes to their platform. Real estate sellers can no longer target ads by age, gender or zip code and Facebook created a housing portal that allows users to view all available house listings. HUD alleges that, despite these changes, Facebook’s AI and machine learning tools create proxy classifications that continue to enable advertisers to discriminate against protected groups.
Short Description
In March 2019 the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development charged Facebook with violating the Fair Housing Act by allowing real estate sellers to target advertisements in a discriminatory manner.
Severity
Moderate
Harm Distribution Basis
Race, Age, Sex
Harm Type
Harm to civil liberties
AI System Description
Facebook's algorithms which provide user classifications to advertisers to enable ad targeting.
System Developer
Sector of Deployment
Arts, entertainment and recreation
Relevant AI functions
Cognition
AI Techniques
machine learning
AI Applications
data analytics, classification
Location
United States
Named Entities
Facebook, Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, National Fair Housing Alliance, Ben Carson, American Civil Liberties Union
Technology Purveyor
Beginning Date
2019-03-01T08:00:00.000Z
Near Miss
Harm caused
Intent
Accident
Lives Lost
No
Laws Implicated
Fair Housing Act
Data Inputs
user Facebook activity, user social network data
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on Thursday charged Facebook with encouraging and enabling housing discrimination through its targeted advertising practices.
HUD is charging Facebook with violating the Fair Housing Act…
The federal government is suing Facebook over allegations of housing discrimination in the social network's advertising platform.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on Thursday announced that it is charging Facebook with v…
Last week I watched a webinar (additional cost) that is available on the NAFCU Online Training Center titled Red Flags for Fair Lending. The webinar was presented live in March of this year on the same day that the United States Department …
The Department of Justice announced today that it has obtained a settlement agreement resolving allegations that Meta Platforms Inc., formerly known as Facebook Inc., has engaged in discriminatory advertising in violation of the Fair Housin…
