In the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court in New York City, several fair housing groups accuse Facebook of allowing landlords and real estate companies to illegally tailor their advertisement audiences on the basis of sex, family status, number of children and other factors. This practice, the housing groups allege, amounts to discrimination. They created fake realty firms and submitted dozens of housing ads to Facebook for review. In October 2016, ProPublica revealed how Facebook enabled marketers to exclude groups with what it called “ethnic affinities,” including blacks and Hispanics, from seeing ads. Still, in November of last year, ProPublica was able to buy dozens of rental housing ads that excluded blacks, Jews, people interested in wheelchair ramps, mothers of high school kids, and Spanish speakers.

Source: thestar March 28, 2018 14:03 UTC