Abstract:

Last week, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development took Facebook and the broader internet industry by surprise and storm with a remarkable allegation: that the company has engaged in discriminatory practices that engendered and perpetuated bias against marginalized classes of the American population -- such as non-Christians, immigrants, and minorities -- by displaying housing ads only to selected audience segments in unfair ways.

This charge of housing discrimination might seem like something of a peripheral matter, given core concerns about social media that relate to interference with democracy, terrorist radicalization and social polarization. But HUD's charge takes direct aim at Facebook's fundamental business model: the company's digital advertising management platform and the algorithms underlying it, which collectively enable commercial entities to splice and select the demographic audience segments they wish to target with ads based on race, gender and politics, among other factors.

That makes HUD's lawsuit an important step at reining in online practices that can otherwise betray decades of important legal and regulatory progress in defending civil rights.