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.

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.

Moderate

Race, Age, Sex

Harm to civil liberties

Facebook's algorithms which provide user classifications to advertisers to enable ad targeting.

Facebook

Arts, entertainment and recreation

Cognition

machine learning

data analytics, classification

United States

Facebook, Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD, National Fair Housing Alliance, Ben Carson, American Civil Liberties Union

Facebook

2019-03-01T08:00:00.000Z

Harm caused

Accident

No

Fair Housing Act

user Facebook activity, user social network data