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Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

propublica.org

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Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#41

Post by avar »

tmh79 wrote: post #15

I'm astonished that facebook is successfully able to pull the "we're a platform, its not our fault people are using it illegally" excuse here. There is a huge difference between allowing people to freely post content on places like FB, twitter, or Reddit, and selling access the attention of people that fit specific characteristics. How long until the tech giants are held accountable for willfully skirting decades of…

If you mainly advertised for employees in certain newspapers you'd get people of a given political leaning. If you advertised on the radio at 6 in the morning you probably wouldn't get anyone under 35.

It's not obvious to me why employers should be able to use the implicit filtering traditional media provides, but not the explicit filtering new advertising platforms provide.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#42

Post by spraak »

Karunamon wrote: post #35
tmh79 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is selling advertising. In this specific case, the product they are selling is illegal. Facebook should be held liable for selling illegal advertising. Do people find this challenging? Is there something wrong with this?

What would happen in the physical world with, say, a classified ad in a newspaper? It's on the poster of the ad to follow the law, not the paper, is it not?

In your example, what do you think would happen if someone posted an ad selling drugs?

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#43

Post by matt4077 »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #34

It's anecdata, but if I ask my teen daughter, Facebook is for older people, and the kids are all using things that I've never even heard of. So not sure how you can really prove discrimination. There is some demographic skewing if you advertise on Facebook vs. other channels, but not sure you can really call it an age issue. Not sure what to make of the social marketing guy in the article -- seems like if you are loo…

Quote: The promotion was set to run on the Facebook feeds of users 25 to 36.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#44

Post by danso »

smallgovt wrote: post #18
danso wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's against U.S. federal law for employers to discriminate against people aged 40-or-over on the basis of age. Having job ads that only younger people could see would seemingly fall afoul of that law: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm

I doubt it runs afoul of that law. Segmentation is a common characteristic of online advertising campaigns. A sophisticated advertiser never shows the same types of ads to young and old audiences (especially on Facebook) because the two audiences react drastically different. If your goal is to run efficient campaigns, you will always separate the two. As a result, the advertiser can simply claim that they separated t…

Someone quoted in the article does make the case that the federal age employment law does allow for other considerations to a "reasonable" degree when targeting age -- i.e. discrimination isn't as cut-and-dry as it would be for targeting race or gender:

> But some companies contend that there are permissible reasons to filter audiences by age, as with an ad for entry-level analyst positions at Goldman Sachs that was distributed to people 18 to 64. A Goldman Sachs spokesman, Andrew Williams, said showing it to people above that age range would have wasted money: roughly 25 percent of those who typically click on the firm’s untargeted ads are 65 or older, but people that age almost never apply for the analyst job...

> Pauline Kim, a professor of employment law at Washington University in St. Louis, said the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, unlike the federal anti-discrimination statute that covers race and gender, allows an employer to take into account “reasonable factors” that may be highly correlated with the protected characteristic, such as cost, as long as they don’t rely on the characteristic explicitly.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#45

Post by tmh79 »

Karunamon wrote: post #35
tmh79 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is selling advertising. In this specific case, the product they are selling is illegal. Facebook should be held liable for selling illegal advertising. Do people find this challenging? Is there something wrong with this?

What would happen in the physical world with, say, a classified ad in a newspaper? It's on the poster of the ad to follow the law, not the paper, is it not?

If the newspaper was somehow able to be physically manifested by or perceived only by white people, or people under 30, or in some way that excluded people of a protected class from ever seeing it if they knew about it and wanted to, then the newspaper should definitely be liable, as should the advertiser.

The material difference between newspapers and facebook is that anyone is allowed to buy a newspaper, but someone of a protected class cannot view ads on facebook that are not targeted to them even if they want to, thus they are excluded.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#46

Post by analog31 »

derekp7 wrote: post #2

Is this different than advertising in a magazine that has a specific reader demographic? Or would that get a company in trouble too, if a the court rules that the intent was to exclude a given group?

Perhaps it's different because it's actionable. For instance, there could be a class action suit on behalf of anybody over 40 who didn't receive the ad. Also, I'm not a lawyer, but as I seem to recall, the "corporate veil" doesn't apply to certain kinds of liability, and I think discrimination is an example.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#47

Post by dictum »

poulsbohemian wrote: post #34

It's anecdata, but if I ask my teen daughter, Facebook is for older people, and the kids are all using things that I've never even heard of. So not sure how you can really prove discrimination. There is some demographic skewing if you advertise on Facebook vs. other channels, but not sure you can really call it an age issue. Not sure what to make of the social marketing guy in the article -- seems like if you are loo…

> It's anecdata, but if I ask my teen daughter, Facebook is for older people, and the kids are all using things that I've never even heard of. So not sure how you can really prove discrimination

Aren't they looking for young professionals (twenty-somethings)? Whatever teenagers are using right now will only become relevant to this debate in a few years, when they'll be the ones targeted by those companies*

[*] I'm too cynical to believe they'll be out of business by then.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#48

Post by eanzenberg »

avar wrote: post #41
tmh79 wrote: post #15

I'm astonished that facebook is successfully able to pull the "we're a platform, its not our fault people are using it illegally" excuse here. There is a huge difference between allowing people to freely post content on places like FB, twitter, or Reddit, and selling access the attention of people that fit specific characteristics. How long until the tech giants are held accountable for willfully skirting decades of…

If you mainly advertised for employees in certain newspapers you'd get people of a given political leaning. If you advertised on the radio at 6 in the morning you probably wouldn't get anyone under 35. It's not obvious to me why employers should be able to use the implicit filtering traditional media provides, but not the explicit filtering new advertising platforms provide.

Probably because the filtering is too powerful and accurate? Anyone can get up at 6am to listen to the radio. If you don't show certain people job ads they may never see or know about the listing.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#49

Post by iak8god »

loeg wrote: post #36
fpisfun wrote: post #27

I would do this before I deleted my Facebook account when I ran ads not to intentionally exclude people but because I figured people over a certain age probably wouldn't know the technologies I was looking for and I figured I would probably end up paying for false positive ad clicks

> because I figured people over a certain age probably wouldn't know the technologies I was looking for This is precisely the kind of age discrimination the law is intended to prevent.

Yep. I was hoping that sentence would end with "because I figured people over a certain age probably wouldn't be interested in entry-level positions," and I was prepared to think that was an interesting point.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#50

Post by chronic193 »

eanzenberg wrote: post #48
avar wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mainly advertised for employees in certain newspapers you'd get people of a given political leaning. If you advertised on the radio at 6 in the morning you probably wouldn't get anyone under 35. It's not obvious to me why employers should be able to use the implicit filtering traditional media provides, but not the explicit filtering new advertising platforms provide.

Probably because the filtering is too powerful and accurate? Anyone can get up at 6am to listen to the radio. If you don't show certain people job ads they may never see or know about the listing.

> Anyone can get up at 6am to listen to the radio.

Anyone could lie about their likes/interests or even age on Facebook. What's your point?

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