Facebook’s sexist, ageist ad-targeting violates Calif. law, court finds | "Shocking" ruling could have "devastating effects," tech law expert warns.

spittingimage , 10 months ago

Nowadays my first thought on hearing something could have devastating effects on the tech industry is “good”.

blunderworld , 10 months ago

Im going to say something incredibly brave. Just quit Facebook.

Uniquitous , 10 months ago

Imagine suing because you actively want to see ads.

lolcatnip , 10 months ago

I for one would much rather have targeted ads than generic ads. I’ve actually discovered products I like through Facebook ads, which basically never happens with untargeted ads. And if they can’t target ads they’ll show even more of them to make up for advertisers no longer being willing to pay a premium.

And let’s be real here: nobody talking about how great this is uses Facebook anyway.

ShittyBeatlesFCPres , 10 months ago

The facts of this case are a little silly but I’ll take it. There’s hundreds of far more serious ways targeted ads are used for illegal discrimination than denying an old lady her life insurance ads. Like landlords, politicians, job recruiters, etc. shouldn’t be able to target ads at all except by some broad, relevant geographic region (like congressional district for a politician or county for landlords). The minute you let them have “affinity groups,” they can just use that as a proxy and only advertise an apartment to Swifties or only advertise a job to people who shop at Men’s Warehouse.

givesomefucks , 10 months ago

Karen sued Facebook because she wanted to see life insurance ads…

She’s claiming it harmed her, because without Facebook ads, she wouldn’t have known about these amazing life insurance policies…

_haha_oh_wow_ , 10 months ago

“bUt MuH pReDaToRy aD nEtWorKs!!1”

Manmikey , 10 months ago

The thing is, no matter how many times big tech companies are caught out and facing inquiries and legal judgements for bending and breaking the rules, lying, doing illegal things, targeting kids, misinformation, election fixing etc etc NOTHING EVER CHANGES

oDDmON , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

Devastating effects=Good for the users

Also, > “Who needs new privacy laws if the Unruh Act already bans most ad targeting?”

Indeed?

edit:also…

givesomefucks , 10 months ago

She’s arguing that she was armed by not seeing specific ads…

If anything the result of this is more ads than less

oDDmON , 10 months ago

You’re absolutely right, that was her initial argument; but it’s the Unruh Act invocation that makes this interesting, as well as the protected classes being negatively affected by the algorithm.

Net effect? I’d go with “Less ads in the long run” for $200. But I’ll still cross my fingers.

ram , 10 months ago

Good. Fuck this ad targeting bullshit. Let it have the most devastating effects and kill the value of all this data these shitty companies are mining from users.

autotldr Bot , 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

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Facebook may have to overhaul its entire ad-targeting system after a California court ruled last month that the platform’s practice of routinely targeting ads by age, gender, and other protected categories violates a state anti-discrimination law.

Further, she alleged that Facebook’s ad-delivery algorithm magnifies the problem by using these required inputs to serve the ads to “lookalike audiences.”

Through its algorithm, Liapes alleged that she found that Facebook “discriminates against women and older people,” by intentionally excluding them from seeing certain life insurance ads.

This, Liapes alleged, caused harm by preventing her from signing up for deals that “often change and may expire”—deals which she said were disproportionately being advertised on Facebook to younger and/or male audiences.

But the court in September disagreed with Facebook’s arguments, finding that Liapes sufficiently stated a valid discrimination claim.

Liapes had asked the court to find that Facebook’s tools violate California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act, which prohibits “businesses from discriminating against people with protected characteristics, such as gender and age.”

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