Facebook makes big changes to its advertising system
Social network can no longer share detailed information
Facebook on Tuesday agreed to overhaul its lucrative targeted advertising system to settle accusations that landlords, lenders and employers use the platform to discriminate, a significant shift for a company that built a business empire on selling personal data.
The settlement compels Facebook to withhold a wide array of detailed demographic information – including gender, age and Zip codes, which are often used as indicators of race – from advertisers when they market housing, credit and job opportunities.
Facebook has long allowed advertisers to target potential customers and employees based on their demographics and interests, as gleaned from the vast trove of data the platform collects.
Now, the social media giant is stepping away from that approach for certain advertisers, amid mounting evidence that its microtargeting techniques were abused.
Although those techniques helped propel Facebook into one of the world’s most successful advertising businesses – with 99 percent of its $55.8 billion in revenue last year deriving from ads – Tuesday’s settlement is unlikely to deal a major blow to the company’s bottom line.
But it could make the platform less valuable to certain advertisers. Many companies use Facebook to recruit workers and promote credit cards.
“It may not affect Facebook very much, but it will hurt small advertisers who require that narrow targeting to sell products,” said Laura Martin, a senior Internet analyst at the investment bank Needham & Co. “If companies can’t reach their micro-targeted demographic, they are going to walk away from advertising on Facebook. All ad pricing could go down if demand by advertisers fall.”
The change arrives at a moment when Facebook and other social media platforms face growing scrutiny from regulators, lawmakers and the public. The company is being investigated by the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and several state attorneys general over the Cambridge Analytica data privacy controversy.
Civil rights advocates have warned for years that Facebook’s ads violated anti-discrimination laws because advertisers were able to use the data to exclude African Americans, women, seniors, people with disabilities and others.
The Justice Department allowed a lawsuit to proceed last year over Facebook’s objections, arguing that the company can be held liable for ad-targeting tools that deprive people of housing offers.
Until now, the company has made only minimal tweaks to its systems and largely resisted calls for change, arguing that its practices were standard in online advertising.
Tuesday’s announcement will require a major overhaul of Facebook’s software. Facebook said it will make the changes by the end of the year, creating a separate portal to limit how much advertisers for housing, employment and credit can micro-target their audience.
“We are fully taking all the steps we can to protect people from discrimination on our platform,” Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook, said in an interview. “We believe this settlement goes not just to [the letter of] the law but beyond the law in taking very, very strong action to make sure any discrimination doesn’t happen.”
Sandberg declined to comment about whether Facebook’s advertising practices were illegal.
The U.S. government is “incorrect” in claiming that there are no further impediments to President Donald Trump’s promised ban on transgender Americans serving in the military, a federal judge said.
The administration said on March 8 that it would issue a memorandum implementing the ban next month, citing the government’s U.S. Supreme Court victory that lifted two nationwide injunctions against the policy. A third injunction that wasn’t part of that case was subsequently lifted on March 7. A fourth injunction, however, hasn’t budged.
“The nationwide preliminary injunction issued by this court remains in place,” U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-kotelly in Washington said in a notice Tuesday. “The fact that the three other nationwide preliminary injunctions which had been in place are now stayed has no impact on the continued effectiveness of this court’s preliminary injunction.”
The judge said her ruling would remain in effect until at least March 29, the deadline
A Mexican man died in U.S. custody Monday, a day after Border Patrol agents apprehended him.
The 40-year-old, whose name was not released, was taken into custody near the Bridge of the Americas in