Financial services use Facebook's ad targeting to block people in certain age groups from seeing their ads, violating Facebook's anti-discrimination policies
The Markup
Context & Ripple Effects
This story is the latest data point in a four-year cycle of exposed discrimination on Facebook's ad platform. In 2019 the company [[a:939689|pledged to stop allowing race, gender, and age targeting in housing, jobs, and credit categories]] after years of documented abuse — including ads excluding demographics that were still approved a year after ProPublica first flagged the practice, a lawsuit by fair housing groups, and HUD charges against the company.
First-order effects
Advertisers running these financial services campaigns are in direct violation of Facebook's stated policies and face takedowns or account penalties if the company enforces them.
Facebook's credibility on its 2019 reform pledge takes a fresh hit: the finding shows its category restrictions are either not covering financial services ads or not being enforced.
Second-order effects
Civil-rights litigants who already sued over housing ads have a template for extending claims into banking and insurance advertising, widening Facebook's legal exposure beyond HUD's housing charges.
Rivals in social advertising face pressure to prove their own targeting controls work in regulated-ad categories, since advertisers' compliance now depends on platform-side enforcement they don't control.
Third-order effects
If self-imposed category rules keep failing audit after audit, enforcement of non-discrimination in digital ads for credit, housing, and jobs shifts further toward regulators and courts rather than platform policy.
The recurring pattern — pledge, violation, investigation — points toward mandatory third-party audits of ad-delivery systems as the likely endgame for platforms selling targeting in regulated industries.
The trend: Platform self-policing of discriminatory ad targeting keeps arriving late and incomplete, leaving regulators and plaintiff lawsuits as the de facto enforcement mechanism for ads in regulated industries.
This week, Facebook VP Monica Bickert told Congress that financial service ads can't use microtargeting. But we found that four different credit & loan ads targeted by age to our #CitizenBrowser panelists on Facebook. @corintxt & @alfredwkng report: https://themarkup.org/...
Congressional hearings with Facebook execs may seem disjointed and rudderless but at least these are moments where the company's leaders say things on record that can be fact-checked and proven to be untrue. https://twitter.com/...
Earlier this week @Facebook told me under oath it does not allow the use of characteristics like age when targeting ads for financial services. This report suggests that testimony was false. I have some serious questions. And I expect accurate answers. https://twitter.com/...
Why did @themarkup build a (very expensive) tool to monitor Facebook? Because it's the only way to know the truth of what is happening on the platform. Congrats to @corintxt and @alfredwkng , who is on fire this week btw https://twitter.com/...
As far as I know, Facebook puts the onus back on the advertiser to ensure their products are used responsibly. Automated advertising is like printing money, but the costs of false advertising or civil rights violations are passed on to the public.
But, as we know, Facebook's systems are leaky. They make promises they don't keep. See @themarkup's reporting on failed promises to ban political group recommendations & Holocaust denial groups (among MANY other examples). https://themarkup.org/... https://themarkup.org/...
If you are thinking this sounds familiar, you are right. In 2016, I wrote about how FB was allowing housing ads that discriminated by race. Multiple lawsuits later, in 2019, FB agreed to stop allowing microtargeting options for housing, credit and employment ads.
New from @themarkup's #CitizenBrowser project: Financial services companies are blocking people in certain age groups from seeing their ads, violating Facebook's anti-discrimination policies and possibly civil rights laws. https://themarkup.org/...
These companies were already known to Facebook, or at least its legal department. Both Aspiration and Chime were cited in a 2019 lawsuit for targeting their financial services by age, which Facebook argued to dismiss: https://themarkup.org/... https://twitter.com/...
High probability that like with other occasions now that they've been exposed by press reported, @maziehirono can expect a correction and follow-up to spin this answer. https://twitter.com/...
uh oh, Bickert and her colleague gave false testimony to Parliament in Feb 2018. Now this report would indicate she gave false testimony to Congress on Tuesday. Sensing a pattern. https://twitter.com/...
Here is Facebook's VP for content policy Monika Bickert telling @maziehirono that financial services ads are restricted from targeting: And our story that found the opposite: https://themarkup.org/... https://twitter.com/...
NEW: Under federal law, ads for credit should not exclude any eligible people from seeing them. As I report with @alfredwkng in @themarkup, on Facebook some still do. 💳🚫 https://themarkup.org/...
The investigations conducted by @themarkup are scientifically sound and accurate. They provide incredible auditing of algorithms without violating people's rights. A new methodological standard all journalists and researchers should strive to follow. More of this! https://twitter…