Facebook Engages in Housing Discrimination With Its Ad Practices, U.S. Says

In addition to targeting Facebooks advertising practices, the housing department, known as HUD, claims in its lawsuit that the company uses its data-mining practices to determine which of its users are able to view housing-related ads.

The lawsuit coincides with a broader push by civil rights groups to scrutinize whether big technology companies are reinforcing real-world biases online by using algorithms to identify and target specific groups of users.

But its main business continues to be based on identifying and dividing its users by characteristics, and then selling that information to those who hope to capitalize on it.

Facebook, which HUD said controlled about 20 percent of the online advertising in the United States, appeared to be taken aback by the suit.

Just this month, Facebook noted, it had removed the advertisers ability to target housing, credit and jobs ads by age, gender, ZIP code and other characteristics in ways that could be considered discriminatory. The social network also recently settled a lawsuit filed by the National Fair Housing Alliance, the American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights organizations over its advertising practices.

The housing agencys suit underscores how effective Facebooks ad-targeting tools are, and how they could perpetuate discriminatory behavior if used by those who want to exclude people based on race, religion, gender or other criteria.

Facebook collects a vast amount of information about its users, and uses its technology to draw additional inferences about them.

Ms. Faras, a former Republican Party official from Texas, dialed back all of the departments fair-housing enforcement activities, sending Facebook a one-page letter ordering, without explanation, the termination of a preliminary investigation into the companys advertising practices shortly after she took office.

Ms. Faras, according to six department officials, told HUD managers that she intended to replace her top subordinate, Timothy Smyth, who had overseen the Facebook case and other high-profile actions, including an investigation into the City of Houston.

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