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Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

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Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#3
News flash: the titles of these ads are clearly not as likely to be attractive to women as they are to men.

If you are completely ignorant of figures and study in this area, it's easy to get incensed over this completely unsurprising, trivial fact.

Advertisement and listing are two completely separate matters. If you are trying to convince people to consider your listing, it makes perfect sense to use language (and imagery?) which will be attractive to the demographic it is visible to. The listing isn't somehow less available to people who weren't targeted as effectively by a specific message.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#5
Blaming Facebook muddies the water a bit. Ultimately the companies advertising on Facebook broke the law when they checked the wrong boxes. Facebook should; however, make that information public knowledge by allowing the public to see the advertising parameters of any given ad if they are curious but to my knowledge, no law requires it. Maybe it's time to start having a conversation about the need advertising transparency.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#6
Marketing segmentation wasn’t really used at all until the mid-70’s to deal with a period declining sales in the US economy. Old people weren’t even treated as a specific segment beyond 65+ until like 1990.

A very productive world existed without any significant marketing targeting other than geolocation and some other rough measures. Perhaps we are returning to such a state of things.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#7
I'm a bit mixed about this; it is clearly discriminatory to publish a job ad that says "women need not apply", but it doesn't feel inherently discriminatory to advertise a job in, say, "Men's Health" but not "Cosmopolitan" magazine. Or to advertise on a particular television channel or program (whose viewers may not match the population at large). That's just how advertising works. Is that crazy?

Would this be different if, for example, Facebook was targeting people for job ads based on "people who like action movies" or "people who like romance novels" (I'm stereotyping here, but just assume you pick a category that ends up being a decent proxy for gender)?

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#8

Blaming Facebook muddies the water a bit. Ultimately the companies advertising on Facebook broke the law when they checked the wrong boxes. Facebook should; however, make that information public knowledge by allowing the public to see the advertising parameters of any given ad if they are curious but to my knowledge, no law requires it. Maybe it's time to start having a conversation about the need advertising transpa…

Can this box be checked legally?

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#9

This is unambiguously illegal and Facebook could stop doing this anytime it wants. Craigslist reminds its users about anti-discrimination laws before they post and provides a means for users to flag illegal ads.

Right now the targeting information for an ad is not disclosed to the recipient, so it's not possible for an end user to know if a given ad is illegal or not unless there's discriminatory information directly in the copy, which is pretty rare.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#10
post #8

Blaming Facebook muddies the water a bit. Ultimately the companies advertising on Facebook broke the law when they checked the wrong boxes. Facebook should; however, make that information public knowledge by allowing the public to see the advertising parameters of any given ad if they are curious but to my knowledge, no law requires it. Maybe it's time to start having a conversation about the need advertising transpa…

Can this box be checked legally?

Yes, you can advertise to only one sex. The problem is they advertised a job ad.
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