Facebook cracking down on illegal discrimination

Facebook has updated its advertising policies to ban discrimination based on personal characteristics, including race, sexual orientation or age.

There is also a new section aimed at educating advertisers about the extent to which ad targeting is allowed on the social network, reported The Guardian

Facebook plans to use technology "that leverages machine learning" to identify the most egregious offenders - those that "offer housing, employment or credit opportunities" in a discriminatory manner.

The move follows accusations that the social network offered tools that allowed advertisers to break American anti-discrimination laws through an ad-targeting feature described as "ethnic affinity" profiling.

Now, if Facebook's tools think that a user is attempting to implement the "multicultural advertising segments" targeting unlawfully, it will force them to undergo manual review, with a Facebook employee explicitly checking for compliance.