The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has filed a lawsuit against Facebook.com for violating the Fair Housing Act. The assistant to HUD Secretary Ben Carson filed the complaint against Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg for allowing landlords to block Black people and other minorities from seeing their advertisements on Facebook.

HUD says Facebook’s ads allowed landlords to discriminate by controlling who sees their ads on Facebook. Dozens of options enabled landlords to block viewers based on race, color, sex, religion, nationality and disability, among others.

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Facebook also allowed advertisers to display housing ads either only to men or women; not show ads to people with children; not show ads to people who practice Hinduism or Christianity; and block ads from displaying in certain zip codes in majority Black or Hispanic neighborhoods.

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