Facebook to ban ethnic affinity advertising to target employment, housing and credit-related services

Facebook on Friday announced it would stop advertisers from using ''ethnic affinity'' to target the reach of employment, housing and credit-related ads to fight discrimination on the social network.

The social network's policies seek to ban discriminatory advertising content or ''ad creative.'' Facebook had until Friday allowed advertisers to use ''ethnic affinity,'' as also gender, age, favourite movies, food preferences and geography, to allow the targeting of commercial messages including ads related to housing, employment and credit services.

''Recently, policymakers and civil rights leaders have expressed concerns that advertisers could misuse some aspects of our affinity marketing segments,'' Erin Egan, Facebook's vice president of US public policy and chief privacy officer, said in a blog post. ''Specifically, they've raised the possibility that some advertisers might use these segments to run ads that discriminate against people, particularly in areas where certain groups have historically faced discrimination - housing, employment and the extension of credit.''

''Discriminatory advertising has no place on Facebook,'' Egan added.

Facebook said it will build tools ''to detect and automatically disable the use of ethnic affinity marketing'' for ads it identifies as offering housing, employment or credit. The company said it will also update its Advertising Policies and require advertisers to confirm that they will not ''engage in discriminatory advertising.'' 

In the blog post Facebook said it would, "Build tools to detect and automatically disable the use of ethnic affinity marketing for certain types of ads; We will disable the use of ethnic affinity marketing for ads that we identify as offering housing, employment, or credit.

"There are many non-discriminatory uses of our ethnic affinity solution in these areas, but we have decided that we can best guard against discrimination by suspending these types of ads. We will continue to explore ways that our ethnic affinity solution can be used to promote inclusion of underrepresented communities, and we will continue to work with stakeholders toward that goal."