Facebook Racist?

By Victoria Robertson on November 13, 2016

Ahh yes, the social media site is also an outlet for bullies and racists. Is it shocking? No. Is it a problem? Yes.

On Friday, Facebook attempted to curb this issue in announcing that it’s going to be disabling a certain tool that many deemed “racist.”

This tool, known as the “Ethnic Affinity” tool, was controversial in that it allowed users (specifically advertisers) to exclude ethnic groups from their target audiences.

And in a society with such raised sensitivity, this ended up being a huge issue.

And possibly for good reason.

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For example, while it makes sense to advertise Victoria’s Secret products to females, excluding men could potentially be sexist. Same goes for the color of your skin, religious affiliation, and so on.

Basically, Facebook meant well, but inadvertently created an issue.

According to Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, “We will disable the use of ethnic affinity marketing for ads that we identify as offering housing, employment or credit.”

According to the social media site, it worked with civil rights organizations (including the American Civil Liberties Union) in order to update the language in advertising policies. The goal was to make clear that discrimination by advertisers utilizing the site isn’t tolerated.

So where did this scrutiny come from?

Earlier in the month, a report showcased Facebook’s offerings to advertisers to exclude specific races under a category marked “Ethnic Affinity.”

Through this category, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans could all be excluded on the self-service advertising portal. The investigation came from Pro Publica.

Of course, the Congressional Black Caucus reacted quickly in a letter to Mark Zuckerberg himself.

In this letter, they claimed, “this is in direct violation of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, and it is our strong desire to see Facebook address the issue immediately.”

In case you weren’t aware, the Fair Housing Act actually prohibited publication/printing of “notices, statements and advertisements [that indicate] discrimination or limitation” to races. And in case you didn’t know, there is a fine. A whopping, $150,000 fine, to be exact.

According to John Relman, a civil rights lawyer:

“To the extent that Facebook has created a filter that enables advertisers who use its platform to exclude users from seeing, reading, or hearing about offers of housing on the basis of race … it is operating in violation of the federal Fair Housing Act.”

He advised the site to rethink the tool in order to avoid lawsuits by users who discovered the issue. If so, they could claim to have been “injured” by the tool and, odds are, they would have won. In other words, we could have all claimed to have been hurt by this tool and, with any inkling of proof and a decent lawyer, we would’ve been a bit richer. Morally questionable, but richer.

Still Facebook denied its being an illegal practice. According to the site, everything was being misconstrued and that was not the intention of the feature.

According to a spokesperson:

“Some audiences might click on Spanish-language ads for a World Cup sponsorship, versus other audiences that might click more on the same ads in English … so the sponsor might run one campaign in English that excludes the Hispanic affinity group to see how well the campaign performs against running that ad campaign in Spanish. This is a common practice in the industry.”

Still, according to Niklas Myhr, an assistant professor of marketing at Chapman University, “What makes the exclude feature seem provocative in Facebook’s ad options is that there are only options to exclude certain ‘ethnic affinities.’”

He continues in saying, “Nowhere can you specifically exclude the Caucasian ethnic affinity.”

So while the intention may have been right, you can only claim it isn’t racism if all races are included. But since they aren’t, this is where the issue arises. And yes, it’s a big issue. Especially given the current state of our country.

According to Myhr, “some people are still caught by surprise and are upset that Facebook is categorizing you as a potential ad target based on your ‘likes’ or demographic information that you volunteered when signing up — but as long as you don’t pay for using Facebook, you basically should consider yourself part of the product that Facebook is selling to advertisers.”

In other words, you don’t have any right to complain about being targeted for ads, because you’re knowingly opting into that when you sign up for Facebook.

But that doesn’t mean that you have to stand for blatant racism in these target ads, which is where the difference lies.

And not to worry, Facebook is correcting this issue before things go to court.

And if you didn’t even know that this was happening, join the club. We’re a little late to the party, but I suppose it’s nice to be annoyed with something other than the political climate, even if just for a few minutes.

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