ON MARCH 28th the American government sued Facebook for allowing advertisers to exclude whole categories of people from seeing ads for housing—couples with children, non-Americans, non-Christians, disabled people, Hispanics, and so on. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) said this violated the Fair Housing Act, which bans discrimination against certain “protected” groups.

Facebook has tried to clean up its act, shutting down tools which allowed advertisers to aim at Facebook users based on age, gender, and zip code. HUD is seeking “appropriate relief” for Facebook’s past actions nonetheless. HUD’s lawsuit also accused Facebook itself of discrimination against minorities through the algorithms it uses to run its advertising business. These are the same ones that Facebook uses to maximise click-throughs and views, and therefore revenue.

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MUMBAI (Reuters) – Websites like Reddit and Telegram are being blocked in India by internet service providers, throwing into question the enforcement of net neutrality rules, advocacy groups said on Wednesday.

Restrictions on “torrent sites” that offer free movie and music downloads are routine in India to prevent copyright infringement. Pornography websites are also blocked by court orders seeking to protect children.

But in recent months, websites such as the discussion board Reddit, messaging service Telegram and comedy site College Humor have been blocked for intermittent periods, often for days and only in some regions, baffling internet users.

“It’s not making any sense, what’s happening,” said Apar Gupta, executive director at the non-profit Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF). “A lot of these blocks are also happening in such a way that no notices are displayed.”

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Facebook challenges Belgian tracking ban

Facebook is challenging a Belgian court order preventing the company from tracking people without their consent.

A Brussels-based court ruled in 2018 that Facebook had broken privacy lawsand needed to delete illegally-gathered data on the country’s citizens.

The company is threatened with fines of 250,000 euros (£214,000) a day for non-compliance.

The social media giant is challenging the court order in a two-day hearing in a Brussels appeals court.

Broken privacy laws

In 2018, a Belgian court ordered Facebook to stop tracking the country’s citizens without their consent.

This included both Facebook users and those who did not use the company’s services.

The country’s privacy watchdog said that the social media platform had broken privacy laws by placing tracking code on third-party websites.

The court told Facebook that it must “stop following and recording internet use by people surfing in Belgium, until it complies with Belgian privacy laws”.

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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 is discriminating against people based upon who they are and where they live,” HUD secretary Ben Carson said in a statement.

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.

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Speaking at an undergraduate class at Stanford University

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