META Meta Platforms Inc

By Nat Ives 

Facebook Inc. is removing age, gender and ZIP Code targeting for housing, employment and credit-related ads as part of a settlement with advocacy groups and other plaintiffs.

The new actions -- and just under $5 million in payments -- settle five discrimination lawsuits filed by the National Fair Housing Alliance, the Communications Workers of America and others, the company said.

"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," Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg said in a blog post that will be published on Tuesday afternoon, according to a spokesman.

Facebook has faced pressure on targeting around such ads for years, sparked by a 2016 report from investigative-news site ProPublica, which said it had been able to buy ads targeted to house hunters that excluded certain groups based on ethnicity. While Facebook didn't allow targeting specifically by race, it lets advertisers seek consumers by criteria it calls "ethnic affinity."

Soon after that report, Facebook said it would no longer let marketers target housing, employment and credit-related ads by ethnic affinity.

The company will now add further restrictions on targeting such ads to U.S. consumers. Geographic targets, for example, will have a minimum 15-mile radius from any specific address or city center, according to Facebook. And the "Lookalike Audience" tool, which lets advertisers try to find Facebook users who resemble the customers they already know, won't incorporate factors such as age, religious views or Facebook Group membership when targeting these ads.

Among other additional steps, Facebook will build a tool to let people search all its housing ads in the U.S., and meet with plaintiffs' attorneys every six months to discuss implementation of the settlement and resolve disagreements.

It is also providing the National Fair Housing Alliance with ad credits to publicize fair housing rights on the platform, according to Diane Houk, counsel at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP, which represented the housing alliance.

Equality has to be the guiding principle of digital marketing and recruiting, said Peter Romer-Friedman, council at Outten & Golden LLP, which represented clients in three of the cases being settled. "That's what the law requires and has required since the 1960s and 70s. It's past time that the advertising industry catches up with the law. The internet is not a civil-rights-free space."

Kieley Taylor, global head of social at WPP PLC's media-agency conglomerate GroupM, said she would keep an eye on how the changes affect the efficacy of Facebook's lookalike tool for clients in sectors such as financial services.

Facebook said it is still working with the Department of Housing and Urban Development to address its concerns over housing ads.

Write to Nat Ives at nat.ives@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 19, 2019 14:15 ET (18:15 GMT)

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