well guess what... the overwhelming majority of uber drivers ARE men - why would you want to waste your ad spend on a non-productive demo?
Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men
41–50 of 407 posts
Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, you can advertise to only one sex. The problem is they advertised a job ad.
Depends on the job. You won’t send a female cleaner in a male locker room. Also some recruiter are explicitely trying to correct a gender imbalance and are therefore actively seeking female candidates. Does that become unethical to advertise to women?
That's a bad example. There are many jobs where men clean female locker rooms/restrooms and visa versa. But I agree with others (and I think you) that it isn't Facebook's responsibility legally to ensure it isn't possible for companies to break the law. Might be able to make a moral argument, but that's a different argument.
Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men
#43Another angle on the issue: If some company is doing something that is suboptimal (such as excluding a viable gender employee group) they will eventually be priced out of the market by competitors (because their inefficiencies will remove their competitiveness).
I wonder how many of these things we should legislate against the "bad guy" vs. just ensure the proliferation/competitiveness of the "Good guys"?
Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men
#44I'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 differ…
> 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)?
No, this would still be illegal (in the US, anyway). The only difference is that Facebook wouldn't be aiding/abetting an illegal hiring practice. Employers can and have been penalized for hiring from homogenous applicant pools.
Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
No one is excluded though. A woman can buy Men's Health ; a man can buy Cosmopolitan . What Facebook is doing is enabling straight up exclusion of genders from advertising, which is completely different in the eyes of the law.
So Victoria's secret should be forced to advertise to men too?
Man, what an unimaginable dystopia, where VS’s hand were forced to the point where they made ads that played on men’s desires and were visually appealing to them ... /s
If you mean, “what if they had to make ads that promoted men wearing their products”, I get your point, but I thought it was a funny ambiguity.
Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really, because some jobs are legitimately only available to people a certain gender and so facebook would still need to make a judgement call.
???? like what?
Is it hard to think of a single job posting that would only be available to only men OR women? Entertainment jobs are especially constrained: Exotic male dancer, exotic female dancer, specific roles in tv/movies/plays, Hooters waitress, etc.
Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men
#47well guess what... the overwhelming majority of uber drivers ARE men - why would you want to waste your ad spend on a non-productive demo?
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Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really, because some jobs are legitimately only available to people a certain gender and so facebook would still need to make a judgement call.
???? like what?
Anything that has a "Bona Fide Occupational Qualification Requirement"(which is the phrase used in the relevant law).
For example are actors/actresses, models, "entertainers"(hooters waitresses)
https://www.laborfinders.com/blog/is-it-ever-legal-to-only-h...
Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
I honestly don't even understand the purpose of advertising anything to only men or only women. If you pay per view, it's entirely rational to target towards the demographic that produces the most spend for your ad budget. Why would you waste money advertising, e.g., mascara or sanitary pads to men? Sure, there's probably some infinitesimal fraction of men who would be interested, but targeting them profitably is not…
Why would you waste money advertising to women who don't want mascara or don't need pads? I would think you'd be better of targetting people who bought some sort of eye makeup if you wanted to sell mascara, and target people who bought pads or tampons if you were selling pads.
I'm not an ad man, but you have imperfect data about your customers, and I gather it's all about trying to predict what they might buy based on very imperfect/incomplete information about them. Plus, your ability to apply more advanced heuristics is constrained by your ability to develop them, both from a technical & marketing standpoint.
"User is a woman" would, in this hypothetical example, be one factor in your larger weighting algorithm. A weighting factor that is, might I add, quite easy to implement compared to detecting male performing arts majors with a specialty in costume design.
Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men
#50I'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 differ…
Yes, it would be very different. For example, the two things you listed are probably rather bad proxies for gender (even if it's only hypothetical). All they had to do was pick the niche they're going for (which may incidentally turn out to be highly skewed to one gender) rather than making it 100% one gender. I honestly don't even understand the purpose of advertising anything to only men or only women. (The obvious…
It is unlikely only and all men. They probably don't target men without college degrees. They way they probably get where they did was by successively narrowing down by selecting more attributes.