Skip to Content

AI Policy & Governance, Privacy & Data

Facebook to stop allowing racially targeted ads for housing, employment, credit

Washington Post:

Facebook will stop letting marketers run housing, employment, and credit ads that target or exclude users by racial and ethnic identity on the social network, the company announced Friday.

Facebook have let advertisers target ads using what it calls “ethnic affinity” for some time, but the practice came under fire after a recent ProPublica report showed how the feature could be used to place ads that may violate federal anti-discrimination laws.

…

The Center for Democracy & Technology, which had urged Facebook to change its system, praised the move.

“These changes will improve Facebook’s platform and protect its users from the worst types of discriminatory advertising,” CDT senior policy analyst Alethea Lange said in a blog post responding to the announcement.

Full story here.

Related Reading

NTIA Comments. White document on black background.

CDT Submits Comments to NTIA on Ethical Guidelines for Research Using Pervasive Data
Graphic for CDT AI Gov Lab's report, "Assessing AI: Surveying the Spectrum of Approaches to Understanding and Auditing AI Systems." Illustration of a collection of AI "tools" and "toolbox" – a hammer and red toolbox – and a stack of checklists with a pencil.

Assessing AI: Surveying the Spectrum of Approaches to Understanding and Auditing AI Systems
The CDT logo. A white "cdt" alongside "Center for Democracy & Technology" on a black background.

Hypothesis Testing for AI Audits