Should?? Like how things ought to be with the world? Facebook shouldn't even know who prefers organic food. There should be nothing tying that preference to any other aspect of people's lives. Facebook should be more like Reddit where people can have whatever accounts they want and can interact on organic food topics without identifying themselves or tying that preference to other interests. Or maybe Facebook should have an explicit opt-in for users to choose what they're okay with being used for ads… … should? everyone should use an adblocker and block Facebook's ads. Also, Facebook should offer a service where you can choose to portray yourself as whatever mix of qualities you want to set for each time you search for something. So anyone should be able to see what the algorithm delivers for a set of characteristics they can adjust at will…
Also, I should stop procrastinating on HN
I have to disagree with you on that. I'd put money on targeting a housing advertisement toward someone with a preference for organic food to be ruled discriminatory within five years. It's an unavoidable logical consequence of the logic driving today's complaint.
If there's an organic restaurant or grocer in a neighborhood, it makes sense to market to those who prefer organic food. There's nothing stopping anyone of any race or background from preferring organic food other than price or education/awareness etc.
Short of laws that ban targeted advertising in general, there will never be a law saying that you can't target people with some consumer preference.
If you tried to avoid black folks by not showing an ad to people who like stereotypical black consumer products, you'd be more likely to get away with it. There would be some burden of proof that you were doing this as a proxy for the protected class.
The core point is that our laws are more likely to have effective loopholes that undermine the actual intention than to have slippery slopes that take the intention and go way too far with it.
The law already exists if that will happen as you say, it will happen no matter what FB does.
So why should FB get to ignore the law unlike thousands of other businesses? Why do they get an exception?
