Facebook found itself in hot water once again Thursday over its advertising policies.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development filed suit against the social media site, accusing it of “encouraging, enabling and causing housing discrimination,” reports Axios.
“We’re surprised by HUD’s decision, as we’ve been working with them to address their concerns and have taken significant steps to prevent ads discrimination,” a Facebook spokesman told the Washington Post.
In a statement announcing the lawsuit, HUD Secretary Ben Carson said Facebook “is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live,” adding that “Using a computer to limit a person’s housing choices can be just as discriminatory as slamming a door in someone’s face.”
Facebook says that this month it removed “advertisers’ ability to target housing, credit and jobs ads by age, gender, ZIP code and other categories in ways that could be considered discriminatory,” reports the The New York Times
The Facebook spokesman said “a breakdown occurred when the government asked for total and unfettered access to the company’s user base, a request Facebook denied because it would have set a dangerous precedent” on privacy, says the Post. The newspaper added that “HUD’s actions … could extend to other tech companies [like Google, Twitter and Amazon] whose practices are also being scrutinized by the agency, according to two people with direct knowledge.”
HUD filed an initial complaint against the tech giant last summer, says Axios, “following a series of investigative reports over the past two years about ways users can abuse Facebook’s ad platform in order to discriminate against certain people.”
That earlier complaint “alleged that [Facebook] allowed advertisers to illegally discriminate in housing ads by excluding some groups from seeing the ads,” Axios says.
The Post quotes a HUD spokesman as saying that until the agency “can verify that Facebook’s practices are in full compliance with the law, we will continue to use all resources at our disposal to protect Americans from the harmful effects of discrimination.”
