The database of ads for the sale and rental of real estate CIAN introduced a ban on direct and indirect discrimination or incitement to it on the basis of racial and ethnic characteristics, according to the company’s website. New rules are introduced from February 1, 2022.
Now, when placing ads on CIAN, it is required to avoid formulations containing direct or indirect discrimination on racial and ethnic grounds.
“The text of the ads should not contain direct and indirect discrimination, as well as the harassment of a person and incitement to discrimination based on race or ethnicity (including features such as skin colour, ethnic and national origin, nationality, citizenship, and religion),” the company specified in its License Agreement.
In the period from December 1, 2021, to February 1, 2022, the authors of the ads are offered to edit their texts themselves if they contain discriminatory wording, otherwise, the ads will be corrected by the service specialists.
The representative of CIAN, in a conversation with RBC, ruled out the possibility of the introduction of a fee for placing ads for renting housing “only to Slavs.”
“Our task is high-quality content on the website, so we do what is in our power and capabilities. We physically do not have the ability and goals to control and somehow regulate the communication between a tenant and a landlord. At the same time, users always have the opportunity to complain about violations of the rules in ads posted on the website,” he said.
As noted, such a measure was introduced due to the fact that as of March 2021, xenophobic ads for renting flats in Moscow and St. Petersburg accounted for 17 per cent of the total number of offers. In particular, on the CIAN website, out of 23,019 ads for housing in Moscow, 17 per cent contained the mark “only Slavs”, and among 7,552 ads for housing in St. Petersburg, such a mark was 16 per cent.
In addition, in November, the online community Flats for Friends also introduced a ban on discriminatory publications when renting out housing, Esquire wrote with reference to the Facebook post of the founder of the group Marfa Nekrasova, which was later deleted by the administration of the social network.
According to the community’s rules, all publications about renting housing must have a postscript that a landlord welcomes “residents of all nationalities, backgrounds, genders, ages and preferences in love,” as well as any of their pets. Nekrasova explained that she made this decision “at the numerous requests of the community members. If an author of the post does not want to “see a certain category of people” in his flat, he will be able to buy a “paid post for discriminators for 499 rubles.”
Ru-Main, 07.12.2021
Source: RBC
