By Tracy Jan and Tracy Jan Reporter covering the intersection of race and the economy Email Bio Follow Elizabeth Dwoskin Elizabeth Dwoskin Silicon Valley Correspondent Email Bio Follow March 19 at 2:02 PM Facebook on Tuesday agreed to overhaul its lucrative targeted advertising system to settle accusations that landlords, lenders and employers use the platform to discriminate against African Americans, women, seniors, people with disabilities and others.
[Facebook says its top product executive, Chris Cox, is leaving, the highest-level departure in years] Facebook said it will make the changes by the end of the year, creating a separate portal to limit how much advertisers for housing, employment and credit can micro-target their audience. The company is paying out less than $5 million to the parties, including a $2.5 million settlement with the National Fair Housing Alliance to train advertisers on how to comply with housing and lending laws, and advertising credits to promote fair housing.
[Zuckerberg says he’s going all in on private messaging. Facebook’s declining user numbers tell us why.] The ACLU and other groups filed a legal complaint last September with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, accusing Facebook of enabling discriminatory job postings with its ad-targeting tools. Some firms, for example, were targeting ads only to people under age 45.
No longer will they be able to target — or exclude — users based on religious and political views or Zip code, which advocates argue serves as a proxy for race. Advertisers will still be able to target by location, with a minimum geographic radius of 15 miles,. Companies could still potentially get around Facebook’s new system if they advertise in other categories.
[Facebook, Google and other big tech giants are about to face a ‘reckoning,’ state attorneys general warn]