There has been an uproar across the world, especially on Facebook, about how discriminatory ads on social media sites should be taken down immediately. Facebook too made promises to not continue with the same practice but here we go again… Facebook is still complying with discriminatory ads and approving them to run on the social media site successfully.
The activity has been brought to light by reporter Jeremy B. Merill. Merill mentioned that, on Facebook, he came across many discriminatory ads against age and “multicultural affinity”. Facebook, as mentioned earlier, had agreed to stop targeting and discriminating in their ads, which primarily comprised of housing, credit and job advertisements.
“In May, a Wisconsin health care agency, Tenderness Health Care, posted a job ad on Facebook looking for personal care workers. According to Facebook’s “Why am I seeing this ad” pop-up, when the agency purchased the ad, it asked Facebook to not show it to anyone over 54 years of age. And they asked Facebook to show it specifically to people who hаve “Africаn Americаn multiculturаl аffinity.”
Facebook’s compliance with such ads could prove troublesome for the company. These practices of running discriminatory ads are strictly against the policies of Facebook, not to mention it also violates the Federal Law.
Civil Rights groups had fought against the same at the beginning of 2019. At that time, Facebook had made a settlement that it shall not be irresponsible and facilitate advertisers who potentially put up these discriminatory ads.
Facebook has also mentioned that the advertisers who are planning to buy housing, credit and job ads shall strictly be prohibited to put up ads that discriminate against gender, age and zip code. The above-mentioned advertisement, however, is a blatant violation of the settlement, Facebook’s own policies and the Federal law.
According to a US Department of Housing and Urban Development complaint, “Facebook provided a toggle button that enables advertisers to exclude men or women from seeing an ad, a search-box to exclude people who do not speak a specific language from seeing an ad, and a map tool to exclude people who live in a specified area from seeing an ad by drawing a red line around that area.”