Twitter and Google under scrutiny for housing discrimination

Image: picture alliance / getty

It appears that, just like misery, an investigation into possible discriminatory ad practices facilitated by a tech giant loves company. 

Following the March 28 revelation that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has filed charges against Facebook for allegedly violating the Fair Housing Act, the Washington Post now reports that Google and Twitter are under investigation by the same agency. And for more or less the same thing. 

It turns out that HUD is looking into the super specific ad-targeting features offered by the companies in an effort to determine if they facilitate housing discrimination. An advertising platform that, say, allows the owner of an apartment complex to purposefully exclude certain groups — such as people of color — from seeing new listings would be in violation of the law. 

Facebook settled a lawsuit about this very unfortunate feature of its site earlier this month, but that apparently wasn’t enough to remove it from HUD’s sights. 

“Even as we confront new technologies, the fair housing laws enacted over half a century ago remain clear—discrimination in housing-related advertising is against the law,” HUD general counsel Paul Compton said in a March 28 press release. “Just because a process to deliver advertising is opaque and complex doesn’t mean that it exempts Facebook and others from our scrutiny and the law of the land.” 

Notice the “and others” bit of that statement? Yeah, so did we. 

Image: Smith Collection / Gado / getty

According to the Post, HUD told Twitter and Google last year that it was looking into similar violations at their respective companies. Unsurprisingly, Twitter is not stoked to be on the receiving end of such an investigation. 

“Twitter doesn’t allow discriminatory advertising on our platform,” a Twitter spokesperson told Mashable over email. “Someone using Twitter to advertise agrees to comply with the law and not use our services for illegal activities. Discrimination in housing and employment is against the law and against our rules.”  

Likewise, Google made it abundantly clear in a statement to Mashable that it is not down with enabling or facilitating illegal discrimination. 

“We’ve had policies in place for many years that prohibit targeting ads on the basis of sensitive categories like race, ethnicity, religious beliefs, disability status, negative financial standing, etc,” a spokesperson wrote via email. “Our policies are designed to protect users and ensure that advertisers are using our platforms in a responsible manner.”

Yes, policies designed to protect users are great! It’s just that sometimes, as Facebook, Google, and Twitter repeatedly remind us, policies alone don’t mean much when divorced from the actual product being offered. Especially if the product in question straight up helps bad actors break the law.