Pain wracks through my being when I have to do the unimaginable for a newspaper publisher: Turn down a paid advertisement. Yet I’ve done it before and I’m sure I’ll do it again when the person placing the ad wants to do something illegal.
The most common reason is for rental property or help wanted ads. The Fair Housing Act and other federal laws prohibit discrimination based on race, religion, sex, handicap, familial status (single mothers, for example) or national origin.
I keep a list published by the New York Press Association of words to avoid in advertisements, as well as phrases that are OK to use. Trouble words include obvious things like requesting certain racial groups but also more subtle phrases that can imply discrimination like “able-bodied,” or “no children.” Some of them I don’t agree with, such as “must be employed.” If I owned a rental house, I would want to make sure the renter had a job so I’d get paid every month. But the government thinks otherwise.
Most recently, I had a disabled man who owns a cleaning business in Mississippi want to run a job ad that said men only could apply. The owner needs help getting around, and it requires a lot of physical strength to help him. I understood where he was coming from, but I had to explain to him that I couldn’t accept the ad with that wording. He wasn’t happy, and I probably wouldn’t have been either. But the rules are the rules.
At least for responsible publications.
Facebook, on the other hand, doesn’t care enough to make sure it follows the law. That became obvious when the social media behemoth got caught not once but twice allowing discriminatory ads. The nonpartisan investigative journalism organization ProPublica ran a test in 2016 by buying ads on Facebook for rental housing. It didn’t actually own any rental property but wanted to see if Facebook would allow it to not show the ads to certain groups. And it did. ProPublica was able to buy ads that narrowed the demographics to exclude African Americans, Asian Americans or Hispanics, along with other protected groups. Facebook apologized and announced in February it had put in place a system to reject such ads.
So ProPublica tested it out again. The results?
“Our ads skated right through the approval process. Again. Approved in under two minutes. It wasn’t just this ad. We also managed to buy ads excluding users based on religion, family status, national origin, sex, race, ability, and more — every group that’s supposed to be protected under major housing laws,” it said in a recent story.
Facebook called it a “technical failure,” said it was sorry again and promised to strengthen its policies and hire more reviewers. I’ll believe it when I see it.
Social media companies want to reap the benefits of publishing information written by users, but they don’t want to be held accountable for what they allow to be communicated via their medium like print, TV and radio are. If a rube like myself can stick to the guidelines, surely one of the richest and most powerful corporations in the world can do it. Perhaps a healthy fine would get the message across.
Reach C-P Editor and Publisher Charlie Smith at csmith@columbianprogress.com
