Facebook charged with home discrimination through targeted ads

Facebook has been charged for allegedly allowing housing advertisers to discriminate against users based on race, sex and disability.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has charged the site for violating the Fair Housing Act.

Facebook said it was “disappointed” by the charges.

“We’re surprised by HUD’s decision, as we’ve been working with them to address their concerns and have taken significant steps to prevent ads discrimination,” a Facebook spokesperson told the BBC in an email.

Facebook “has offered advertisers hundreds of thousands of attributes from which to choose”, allowing them to exclude groups like “women in the workforce”, “foreigners” or “Puerto Rico Islanders”, or those who expressed an interest in “Hijab Fashion”, “parenting” or “service animal”, the document says.

It also alleges Facebook allowed advertisers to draw red lines on maps to exclude certain neighbourhoods, or to choose to show ads to only men or only women.

As it stands an administrative law judge will hear the charges, rather than a federal court. The judge could award damages if discrimination is found to have taken place.

These charges mark the latest in a series of scandals to hit Facebook.