back to article Facebook agrees to dial back 'racial affinity' ads

Facebook says it will stop allowing advertisers to set display-by-race preferences for certain types of ads. The House of Zuck said in a Friday blog post that it would not remove its "racial affinity" preference outright, but would "build tools to detect and automatically disable" the preference in ads for housing, job …

  1. Version 1.0 Silver badge

    Big Data

    Welcome to the world of "big data" - I wonder how long it will be before the Republicans decry the invasive effects of "Big Government" interfering with legitimate business decisions?

    Realistically, it's very hard to stop people who want to discriminate from finding ways of doing it - outlaw one approach and they will simply find another slightly more subtle method. The problem isn't the law or lack of it, it's the people.

    1. Notas Badoff

      We've collected all this data and can say...

      "Gotcha!"

      Hmm, so maybe the idea could be to continue allowing this to be done, and after six months or a year, say to the shady advertisers "Okay, show us the figures of who you sold to / leased to / etc." And now that we've established an obvious pattern of discrimination, your fine / sentence will be this much.

      't ain't entrapment if you do it to yourself.

      Oooo, and then FB get to claim the high road, that they cooperated with society to squelch the ne'erdowells! (I've got my rose-colored glasses on)

      1. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
        Alien

        Re: We've collected all this data and can say...

        As the saying goes, “Our prices discriminate, so we don’t have to.”

        Picked up from Who Were the Racist Tenants Who Insisted Fred Trump Not Rent to Blacks in Coney Island and Brighton Beach?

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Big Data

      > The problem isn't the law or lack of it, it's the people.

      Or in this case, Farcebook deciding it's a good idea to track the ethnicity of its users.

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Facepalm

        Re: Big Data

        it follows that SOME idiot out there will assume that members of a particular 'group' are all in lock step with one another. Same kinds of "demographic" thinking that helped to fail all of the recent election poll analysis, why everyone was "so surprised" at the results, etc.

        Using race like that is flawed thinking, out of the box. Might as well say all Catholics buy certain products, or all Jews wear certain kinds of clothing, or just say white guys all wear T shirts, own guns, and want more fishing poles (so they can be targeted for ads accordingly). And of course, they *ALL* want VIAGRA (or so the spammers seem to think).

        Racially-based demographics. Being STUPID since the 1960's.

        Well, *ACTUALLY*, it's how people are MANIPULATED, so I guess I should say "being manipulative since the 1960's" as well...

        1. MNGrrrl

          Re: Big Data

          That's not, nor ever has been, how marketing works. Marketing is a game of statistics, of odds. And so you try to maximize the amount of eyeballs interested in whatever you're selling -- and demographics does that. You've confused macro and micro-economics.

    3. William 3 Bronze badge

      Re: Big Data

      Such as TTIP?

  2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Alien

    Wow cool

    Now there will be finally cross-pollination between suburban "white flight" people, inner city blacks, latino barrios, asian enclaves and jewish neighborhoods.

    Multicultural unicorns will be racing across a sky of rainbows.

    No wait... it's just progressive bullshit and cargo cultism.

  3. HAL-9000

    priceless

    In the middle of reading weapons of math destruction, and this is exactly the kinda thing Cathy discusses. Nice to see real world proliferation. Great book so far, recommended

    - a shameless plug

    1. BebopWeBop

      Re: priceless

      From the blurb

      But as Cathy O’Neil reveals in this urgent and necessary book, the opposite is true. The models being used today are opaque, unregulated, and uncontestable, even when they’re wrong.

      So true about many of the models we use to determine policy and actions.

    2. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Happy

      Re: priceless

      'Weapons of Math Destruction'. That book sounds interesting. wish I had more time to read things like that.

  4. MNGrrrl
    Trollface

    Yeah right.

    You mean like how they promised they would stop banning drag queens, rape victims, and other people with their 'real name policy' by algorithm? At some point, people need to wakeup and realize you can't solve social problems with technology. And by people, I mean the lawmakers who should have sued Facebook into non-existance years ago.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Yeah right.

      > At some point, people need to wakeup and realize you can't solve social problems with technology.

      Nope, but you can create them alright.

      In this case, what's stopping Farcebook from reversing the choice. As in, giving the customer the option to "tag" their ad as directed preferentially to a certain ethnicity or group of ethnicities (along with the other usual stuff: location, etc.) *but* letting the consumer say, through a profile preference, "show me ads for niggas / crackers / ragheads / jocks / wogs / sheep molesters / Fr**ch / etc., etc."

      > And by people, I mean the lawmakers who should have sued Facebook into non-existance years ago.

      Lawmakers, as the name hints, make the laws. It would be the judiciary that applies them and the executive that enforces them (in States following the principle of separation of powers).

      1. MNGrrrl

        Re: Yeah right.

        > In this case, what's stopping Farcebook from reversing the choice.

        Economics. It's cheaper not to care.

        > Lawmakers, as the name hints, make the laws. It would be the judiciary that applies them and the executive that enforces them (in States following the principle of separation of powers).

        Pedantic, def.: This.

    2. Francis Boyle Silver badge

      Re: Yeah right.

      "At some point, people need to wakeup and realize you can't solve social problems with technology."

      Social problems are rarely solved by anything else. That there are literal slaves toiling in the fields of Alabama is not because people in the 21st century are better than those in the nineteenth but because we have mechanical harvesters.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Yeah right.

        " That there are literal slaves toiling in the fields of Alabama is not because people in the 21st century are better than those in the nineteenth but because we have mechanical harvesters."

        Nonsense. I assume you aren't aware that this nation fought a bloody war to eliminate slavery? And that was well before mechanical harvesters?

    3. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: Yeah right.

      "And by people, I mean the lawmakers who should have sued Facebook into non-existance years ago."

      Sigh

      If you make laws that's all you do. You don't enforce them.

      If the laws you make provide for civil damages then it's up to those injured to sue.

      If the laws you make create criminal offences then it's a matter for the appropriate criminal enforcement agency to prosecute and the options for punishment are fines or imprisonment which are not the same as suing for damages.

      In either case it's up to the court to find for the plaintiff/prosecution, whichever applies, and to decide on the damages/punishment.

      There are good reasons why we have these different approaches for civil and criminal matters* and different roles for legislators, prosecutors and courts.

      *And it's not a good thing that IP issues have been allowed to blur this distinction.

    4. William 3 Bronze badge

      Re: Yeah right.

      I would imagine a real name policy that doesn't discriminate is better than one that makes exceptions for whatever identity card you want to play to virtue signal.

      For the simple reason it's LESS DISCRIMATORY.

      But if you wan't more discrimination, feel free, hypocrite.

  5. Ole Juul

    insincerity

    not sure why that word keeps popping up in my mind whenever I hear about Facebook agreeing to do something

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: insincerity

      "Facebook agreeing to do something"

      Every time I hear about these *kinds* of things coming from THAT company, I laugh hard AT them and want even LESS to do with them.

      Face-blank needs a cluebat.

  6. Mage Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Pathetic

    They are encouraging their users to post not just their own private info, but photos and info of 3rd parties.

    They only exist to exploit people

    They dishonestly track with the "like" buttons that web admins are pasting on their sites (that might be illegal. At least though El Reg has four Icons on mast head, they don't have the evil scripts provided by those companies.).

    They profile people by ethnic background (so called "race"), age and gender orientation.

    They constantly pester users to add more personal information. They allow lies, propaganda, marketing to be disseminated as news. They claim not to be publishers, but edit, curate and decide on useres reach even to their followers based on payment. They claim exemption from existing regulation because "tech" and only a "carrier". Both lies. Even phone numbers by having features only enabled by SMS code.

    They should be shut down. They are poisonous to human culture, deceptive, and parasites on the Web.

    They should not be permitted to run, own or fund any of their so called "free" filtered internet access programs.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Facebook is the pits

    Just say no and stop feeding the dragon.

    Big Data is nothing without Data. You are Data to FB so just starve it to death.

  8. jake Silver badge

    Facebook intentionally allows racism? (What else would you call it?)

    I'm ever so glad that I have never had anything to do with them.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    hmmm....

    Advertising housing & jobs on FB... isn't that discriminatory against those of us with the good sense not to use it?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: hmmm....

      Look at it this way: Would your life be simpler if halfwits had that information tattooed on their forehead so you wouldn't have to waste any time identifying who they are?

      1. Scroticus Canis
        Holmes

        Re: hmmm.... - "simpler if halfwits had that information tattooed on their forehead"

        Why waste the ink, most of them are shuffling around head-down over a "smart" phone.

  10. Infernoz Bronze badge
    Big Brother

    Both this Frankfurt School cultural sabotage and corporate abuses are evil

    People of different cultures often respond more favourable to their cultural content despite the cultural/social propaganda & sabotage of multi-culturalism, Political Correctness, Victim cults, etc. spawned by the evil Communist Frankfurt School, spawned by insanely greedy banksters! Employers also naively take advantage of these toxic ideas to shift work to lower paid other culture workers, out of greed, but are ironically digging their or their children's early grave.

    Facebook, like some other major corporate social media platforms, is a façade of shallow social interaction which abuses and censors user content and views, for corporate control and profit, so anything which hinders it is helpful. The corporate mainsteam and social media behaviour during the UK referendum and the USA elections revealed just how shockingly biased it has become to corporate and collectivist interests rather than real people's interests; this is dangerous because a lot of lazy and less intelligent people can be deceived into thinking and acting stupidily.

    1. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

      Re: Both this Frankfurt School cultural sabotage and corporate abuses are evil

      Have you actually read Adorno and / or Horkheimer?

    2. Mephistro
      Thumb Up

      Re: Both this Frankfurt School cultural sabotage and corporate abuses are evil (@ Infernoz)

      The fact that most social platforms are too damn friendly to "PR firms" (read this as textbots, paid shrills & grass roots campaigns) is a good reason to never trust data from those platforms, and also to never trust said platforms with your -or your friends- personal data.

      And this is only the beginning. Every political party, every company with image issues, every religion , every sect and every vested interests group are getting into the game, with their own paid/voluntary shrills and textbots or hiring a "PR firm" for these tasks.

      Thanks to this "Social Media" we can expect many more stampedes like Brexit and Trump. Because masses_of_cattle+wolves=stampede!

  11. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    "Ethnic affinity services"

    That term goes beyond creepy and into the troubling: this is the sort of nonsense language and ideas that utterly inward looking sociopathic communities come up with when they feel the need to apply (often by force) their distorted scale of values to others outside the community.

    The Facebook corporation is systematically sick and unhealthy, and this will not end well for anyone involved.

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