Discrimination’s Digital Frontier
Ad platforms such as Facebook can perpetuate the types of harms that civil-rights laws are meant to address.
Data and technology are the new frontier in the struggle for civil rights, and out on the frontier, a lot can go wrong. Millions of people find their homes or learn about jobs through ads, but what once took place in the pages of newspapers now happens on digital platforms. Laws such as the Fair Housing Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 have long helped hold newspapers and their advertisers accountable for discriminatory marketing. But today, digital platforms—which deliver exponentially more ads than their newsprint predecessors—are making these core civil-rights laws increasingly challenging to enforce. The opacity
