News

Craigslist Under Attack for Bias in Housing Ads

Written on: February 23rd 2006
Author: by Sarah Novotny |
Feed: XML Feed

According to a New York Times report, a lawsuit has been filed against online classifieds leader Craigslist by the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The fair housing group is accusing the company for violating the Fair Housing Act of 1968 by publishing discriminatory advertisements.

If the Lawyers’ Committee wins out with the lawsuit, Craigslist will be forced to follow the same rules newspapers do in their classified advertising listings, screening each ad to make sure no antidiscrimination laws are violated. As a result, this means ads like the ones the lawyers’ group said it spotted on Craigslist in a six-month investigation would be banned.

It’s a precarious situation for the hugely popular company, which permits anonymous users to post free ads that are unedited, unscreened and of unlimited length.
In a statement on Craiglist’s site, CEO Jim Buckmaster, stated that manually screening “the nearly two million free housing ads of unlimited length posted each month, a volume of ads greater than that received by all U.S. newspapers combined,” would be inappropriate and counterproductive.

The housing group claims that some of the ads spotted on Craigslist contained language like “African-Americans and Arabians tend to clash with me” and “No kids allowed.” Other ads the group flagged gave requirements like “single occupancy only” or “no minorities.”
Ads of that nature are illegal in newspapers and other publications, and the Lawyers’ Committee says they should be banned online as well. The Fair Housing Act makes it illegal to publish ads that exclude potential tenants on the basis of race, gender, marital status, national origin and religion.

According to a report by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, a research group, users of online classified ad services increased 80 percent in 2005 from a year earlier, to 26.3 million. Nearly nine million of those users posted ads on Craigslist. The report was based on data gathered by comScore Media Metrix.

Craigslist has until March 15 to respond to the lawsuit.

Reader Comments.

No comments yet

More News

Features

Automakers Need to Become Better Conversationalists July 2nd 2009
Affiliates can win in the media buy game July 2nd 2009
Crowd-Sourced Ads: A Measured Response June 28th 2009
Is the government coming for you? June 28th 2009
Customer Loyalty: How to Earn It June 25th 2009

Features Archive

Latest News

Readers weigh in on ATT, ad networks and the iPhone July 2nd 2009 ADOTAS — In our weekly poll, readers overwhelmingly said that [...] more »
Hiring, promotions, location, partnerships and product news July 2nd 2009 ADOTAS — Internet Oldtimers Foundation, Jumptap, eXelate, Kampyle, The Digital [...] more »
OPA large ad units unfurl across the web July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — The Online Publishers Association said a group of [...] more »
Email spam in June worst since 2007 July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — MessageLabs Intelligence released its numbers for June, and [...] more »
Joost becomes YouTube roadkill, starts layoffs July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — Despite reworking its technology to work in a [...] more »
Ad networks, not websites, choked on Michael Jackson news July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — The news of the pop star’s death saw [...] more »
StrongMail doubling down on social media, buys PopularMedia July 1st 2009 ADOTAS — StrongMail has announced that it acquired PopularMedia, a [...] more »

News Archive

Spotlight

Trust Me – I’m a Professional … SEOADOTAS — At WebMetro we typically provide SEO Action Plans as part of campaigns. As the name implies, an SEO [...] more...

Does the iPhone need to divorce ATT?

yes

no

no, the iPhone just needs multiple partners.

View Results
Loading ...

Polls Archive

Adotas

Where media buyers start online

Navigation

Supplementary Navigation