Facebook makes smallest necessary change to race

Facebook will no longer allow advertisers to target or exclude different races in ads related to housing, employment and credit, the company said Friday.

"Since concerns about our ethnic affinity marketing were raised, Facebook has been meeting with stakeholders to listen to their feedback and ideas about how Facebook can better support its existing efforts to combat wrongful discrimination," a Facebook spokesperson said. "We take these issues seriously. Discriminatory advertising has no place on Facebook."

Facebook's tool allowing advertisers to target or exclude groups based on "ethnic affinity" came under scrutiny last month when ProPublica published a report detailing how the tool allowed the news organization to post an ad for a housing event that excluded African-Americans. That type of exclusion is illegal under federal law in ads related to housing and employment, although Facebook claimed its "ethnic affinity" category only grouped users by interest in a certain race, and not by users' race itself.

Facebook will not stop the practice of "ethnic affinity" marketing entirely.

Instead, Facebook said Friday that it would build tools to disable ethnic affinity marketing for ads for housing, employment and credit, clarify its advertising policies and "provide more education" for businesses and other advertisers. Facebook will also move the "ethnic affinity" category from its "demographics" section to a "behavior" section seen by advertisers.

Facebook said that to arrive at these changes it met with politicians and civil rights groups including New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the American Civil Liberties Union, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the National Fair Housing Alliance.

At the time of ProPublica's report, Facebook strongly defended its use of "ethnic affinity" marketing and emphasized that the ad the news organization purchased was for an event related to renters' concerns, not for housing itself — a gray area in federal law.

"We are making these changes to deter discrimination and strengthen our ability to enforce our policies," Facebook Vice President of U.S. Public Policy Erin Egan wrote in a blog post. "We look forward to finding additional ways to combat discrimination, while increasing opportunity, and to continuing our dialogue with policymakers and civil rights leaders about these important issues."

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