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Facebook to overhaul ad targeting to prevent discrimination

By The Associated Press - | Mar 20, 2019

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Facebook will overhaul its ad-targeting systems to prevent discrimination in housing , credit and employment ads as part of a legal settlement.

For the social network, that’s one major legal problem down, several to go, including government investigations in the U.S. and Europe over its data and privacy practices.

The changes to Facebook’s advertising methods -which generate most of the company’s enormous profits – are unprecedented. The social network says it will no longer allow housing, employment or credit ads that target people by age, gender or zip code. Facebook will also limit other targeting options so these ads don’t exclude people on the basis of race, ethnicity and other legally protected categories in the U.S., including national origin and sexual orientation.

The social media company is also paying about $5 million to cover plaintiffs’ legal fees and other costs.

Facebook and the plaintiffs – a group including the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Fair Housing Alliance and others -called the settlement “historic.” It took 18 months to hammer out. The company still faces an administrative complaint filed by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in August over the housing ads issue.

Discrimination hasn’t been Facebook’s only problem with ad targeting. It’s taken fire for allowing advertisers to target groups of people identified as “Jew-haters” and Nazi sympathizers. It’s also still dealing with fallout from the 2016 election, when, among other things, Facebook allowed fake Russian accounts to buy ads targeting U.S. users to stir up political divisions.

One of the complaints said that Facebook violated the Fair Housing Act because its targeting systems allow advertisers to exclude certain audiences, such as families with young children or disabled people, from seeing housing ads. Others alleged job discrimination, with ads being shown to men but not women in traditionally male-dominated fields, or only to younger users.

As part of the changes, advertisers who want to run housing, employment or credit ads will no longer be allowed to target people by age, gender or zip code. Facebook will also limit the targeting categories available for such ads. For example, such advertisers wouldn’t be able to exclude groups such as “soccer moms” or people who joined a group on black hair care.

Endlessly customizable ad targeting is Facebook’s bread and butter. The ads users see can be tailored down to the most granular details – not just where people live and what websites they visited recently, but whether they’ve gotten engaged in the past six months or share characteristics with people who have recently bought a BMW, even if they have never expressed interest in doing so themselves. It’s how they company made $56 billion in revenue last year.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, would not say whether the changes will hurt the company’s advertising revenue. The most important thing, she said, was to protect Facebook’s users from discrimination.

“Today’s changes mark an important step in our broader effort to prevent discrimination and promote fairness and inclusion on Facebook,” she said in a blog post Tuesday . “But our work is far from over.”

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