Meta Agrees to Alter Ad-Targeting Tech in Settlement With U.S.
Summary
SAN FRANCISCO — Meta agreed to alter its ad-targeting technology and pay a penalty of $115,054 on Tuesday, in a settlement with the Justice Department over claims that the company had engaged in housing discrimination by letting advertisers restrict who was able to see ads on the platform based on their race, gender and ZIP code. The new method, which is referred to as a “variance reduction system,” relies on machine learning to ensure that advertisers are delivering ads related to housing to specific protected classes of people. Facebook, which became a business colossus by collecting its users’ data and letting advertisers target ads based on the characteristics of an audience, has faced complaints for years that some of those practices are biased and discriminatory. In 2018, Ben Carson, the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development at the time, announced a formal complaint against Facebook, accusing the company of having ad systems that “unlawfully discriminated” based on categories such as race, religion and disability. In the years since, Facebook has clamped down on the types of categories that marketers could choose from when purchasing housing ads, cutting the number down to hundreds and eliminating options to target based on race, age and ZIP code.
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