Facebook belatedly makes it harder to run some discriminatory ads

Nothing like finally doing the right thing after being sued and browbeaten into it. Sort of. 

Scandal-plagued Facebook announced March 19 that it would take steps to address one of its many structural flaws. Namely, the company will no longer allow advertisers to discriminate when it comes to housing, jobs, or credit advertisements that run on the social media platform. 

“These changes are the result of historic settlement agreements with leading civil rights organizations and ongoing input from civil rights experts,” Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg wrote in a press release announcing the changes. 

To put it another way, organizations such as the ACLU and the National Fair Housing Alliance sued Facebook following news that its targeted advertising tools allowed, for example, those posting job listings to only target young male Facebook users.

While Facebook is promising to end support for targeted discrimination via its platform on the aforementioned ad types, Sandberg’s press release attempted to recast Facebook’s forced hand as the actions of a company standing up for what is right. 

“There is a long history of discrimination in the areas of housing, employment and credit, and this harmful behavior should not happen through Facebook ads,” she wrote. “We’re grateful to everyone who has worked with us to improve our ads tools and to the NFHA and ACLU for their leadership.”

And yet, shortly after ProPublica first revealed in 2016 that it was able to use Facebook’s tools to place housing ads that would specifically not be shown to minorities, Facebook sang a very different tune. The company defended the use of its so-called “ethic affinities” categories for ad targeting in a statement denouncing the anti-discrimination lawsuit it faced. 

“The lawsuit is utterly without merit and we will defend ourselves vigorously,” a spokesperson told Mashable at the time. “Multicultural marketing is a common practice in the ad industry and helps brands reach audiences with more relevant advertising.”

The lawsuit, it seems, helped Sandberg see the situation a bit more clearly. That, and perhaps the (admittedly paltry) subsequent financial cost. According to the New York Times, Facebook will also pay less than $5 million to settle five separate suits related to this its ad targeting features.

It’s important to note that going forward Facebook will enact a structural change in an effort to prevent malicious actors from gaming its all-too-easily gamed system. 

“In the first-of-its-kind settlement announced today, Facebook has agreed to create a separate place on its platform for advertisers to create ads for jobs, housing, and credit,” explains a March 19 ACLU press release. “Within the separate space, Facebook will eliminate age- and gender-based targeting as well as options for targeting associated with protected characteristics or groups.”

So there you go. Facebook finally admitted that it did something wrong, and all it took was a series of major lawsuits.