Facebook will eliminate more than 5,000 targeting opportunities to prevent discrimination in ads. Advertisers must not hide their advertising from people who have an interest in topics such as “Islamic culture”, “Buddhism” or “Indian culture”.
The measure follows an official complaint by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) against Facebook, according to which advertisers can selectively exclude certain demographic groups. The complaint could escalate into a federal action.
In July last year, a similar event forced Facebook to sign an agreement with Washington State to remove all categories related to race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion.
Facebook has been under public scrutiny since 2016 when a similar conflict arose, and both civil and government organizations have considered how the social network has tools to create illegal forms of discrimination on issues such as access to employment and credit and services such as real estate protected by federal law.
In a blog post, Facebook said it was committed to “protecting people from discriminatory advertising on our platforms,” and will also remove the 5,000 options “to prevent abuse” of its tools.
They believe that “reducing the risk of abuse is more important” than the effectiveness of the instrument in other sectors that have used their advertising space. In parallel with the abolition of the options, they will also extend their training programme for advertisers to their obligations.
Advertisers of real estate, jobs and loans must be certified to continue to publish ads. The program was developed with marketing experts to demonstrate the difference between acceptable and discriminatory targeting.
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