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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

#211

Post by Endy »

rimliu wrote: post #204
Endy wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has nothing to do with virtue, it's a matter of Facebook and its advertisers violating the written law. EEOC exists due to law, and all employers are required to abide by it. If you violate equal opportunity employment by discriminating for any one of a number of protected classes, you are acting unlawfully. Facebook should not be so openly allowed to violate the law, and for doing so, the individuals in the corpo…

Facebook does not employ anyone here, it's about ads.

If you allow an unlawful ad to exist on your platform, you are knowingly violating the law and should be punished.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#212

Post by monochromatic »

Endy wrote: post #181
King-Aaron wrote: post #175

So the argument, as I see it here, is that companies should be forced to spend additional resources advertising to demographics that they have identified as not strong leads in their campaigns, so that overly virtuous people can feel happy about them spending money on something that likely won't concern them in the slightest. Righto. If the article's title was "Facebook is letting job advertisers target only women" o…

It has nothing to do with virtue, it's a matter of Facebook and its advertisers violating the written law. EEOC exists due to law, and all employers are required to abide by it. If you violate equal opportunity employment by discriminating for any one of a number of protected classes, you are acting unlawfully. Facebook should not be so openly allowed to violate the law, and for doing so, the individuals in the corpo…

What law specifically does this violate?

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#213

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Endy wrote: post #181
King-Aaron wrote: post #175

So the argument, as I see it here, is that companies should be forced to spend additional resources advertising to demographics that they have identified as not strong leads in their campaigns, so that overly virtuous people can feel happy about them spending money on something that likely won't concern them in the slightest. Righto. If the article's title was "Facebook is letting job advertisers target only women" o…

It has nothing to do with virtue, it's a matter of Facebook and its advertisers violating the written law. EEOC exists due to law, and all employers are required to abide by it. If you violate equal opportunity employment by discriminating for any one of a number of protected classes, you are acting unlawfully. Facebook should not be so openly allowed to violate the law, and for doing so, the individuals in the corpo…

It doesn't necessarily break the law though, as far as I can tell.

There are exceptions in the law for when the person's sex genuinely matters. If you're hiring male models/dancers/actors/medical test subjects, for instance, then you're exempted. As far as I could see in my skim-read of the article, it makes no mention of such cases.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#214

Post by onetimemanytime »

patmcc wrote: post #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 differ…

>>but it doesn't feel inherently discriminatory to advertise a job in, say, "Men's Health" but not "Cosmopolitan" magazine.

Similar but still very different argument. A woman can pick up Men's Health but FB ads just don't show up in her stream. Also Uber specifically and purposefully left women out, unless they say, "oh, we clicked the checkbox by mistake" ("or didn't click the women one..." )

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#215

Post by drewmol »

meowface wrote: post #22
gascan wrote: post #15

Earlier 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…

In classic rubber duck-debugging style, I ended up realizing that as soon as I pressed submit. In that case I suppose it's not very ethically questionable for things that are very clearly 100% (within a minuscule margin of error) men's only (prostate health, etc.) or women's only (sanitary pads). I guess the real quandary is for stuff that's male-dominated like hard, dangerous physical labor (coal mining etc.), but n…

If it's sexist(Wikipedia definition, yeah... I looked it up) then it's unethical, and if it's unethical I'd assume that's because of the sexism. Is it unethical and sexist? If it is, being overtly sexist/racist/classist and supporting it with data seems worse to me that just the former. Even it it is, it should surely not be outlawed.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#216

Post by fapjacks »

mdasen wrote: post #203
patmcc wrote: post #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 differ…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact One thing you might be interested in reading about is Disparate Impact. Discrimination cases can be proven by showing that a practice has a disproportionately adverse impact on members of a protected class, even in the absence of intentional discrimination. The Supreme Court noted in Griggs v. Duke Power Co that the Civil Rights Act bans "not only overt discrimination bu…

Speaking of smells, my initial reaction is that Disparate Impact smells broken. I can see pretty clearly how it would be possible to argue legally that advertising a job internally and not externally (to a company) is discriminatory. And following that further along, in this way, I can see a pretty straightforward method of declaring any job advertising as discriminatory under that decision. I think law like this is broken because it's like many (American) laws where it ends up selectively enforced, because the base of people violating the law is effectively infinite. So in that way it's not used to fight discrimination, but instead becomes yet one more way to fight the oldest battle in history: The battle to consolidate and preserve the power of existing institutions of control and weaken the influence of competition and punish outsiders.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#217

Post by ag71668 »

Endy wrote: post #181
King-Aaron wrote: post #175

So the argument, as I see it here, is that companies should be forced to spend additional resources advertising to demographics that they have identified as not strong leads in their campaigns, so that overly virtuous people can feel happy about them spending money on something that likely won't concern them in the slightest. Righto. If the article's title was "Facebook is letting job advertisers target only women" o…

It has nothing to do with virtue, it's a matter of Facebook and its advertisers violating the written law. EEOC exists due to law, and all employers are required to abide by it. If you violate equal opportunity employment by discriminating for any one of a number of protected classes, you are acting unlawfully. Facebook should not be so openly allowed to violate the law, and for doing so, the individuals in the corpo…

Equal opportunity doesn't mean equal candidacy.

Women are not prevented from applying for these jobs, nor are the ads hidden from women. But real-life demographic analysis shows that men are overwhelmingly the qualified demographic for this role.

Advertising to that demographic is not against the law, and it is not discrimination. Forcing employers to waste resources equalizing the advertising efforts across worthless demographics is just fucking stupid. Stop this social justice warrior insanity.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#218

Post by tikkabhuna »

sievebrain wrote: post #159
zeroname wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" § 1604.5 Job opportunities advertising. It is a violation of title VII for a help-wanted advertisement to indicate a preference, limitation, specification, or discrimination based on sex unless sex is a bona fide occupational qualification for the particular job involved. The placement of an advertisement in columns classified by publishers on the basis of sex, such as columns headed “Male” or “Female,” will be con…

This does imply the TSA are breaking the law given the story above about how they "strongly encourage" women to apply.

I agree with the other person who replied. Couldn't they also say that they need women for pat downs of women, etc? So they have a legitimate reason for encouraging women to apply?

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#219

Post by belorn »

Endy wrote: post #181
King-Aaron wrote: post #175

So the argument, as I see it here, is that companies should be forced to spend additional resources advertising to demographics that they have identified as not strong leads in their campaigns, so that overly virtuous people can feel happy about them spending money on something that likely won't concern them in the slightest. Righto. If the article's title was "Facebook is letting job advertisers target only women" o…

It has nothing to do with virtue, it's a matter of Facebook and its advertisers violating the written law. EEOC exists due to law, and all employers are required to abide by it. If you violate equal opportunity employment by discriminating for any one of a number of protected classes, you are acting unlawfully. Facebook should not be so openly allowed to violate the law, and for doing so, the individuals in the corpo…

The parent post allude to the fact that many companies do already advertise exclusively to a single gender in the name of outreach. You can not just throw around the idea of "protected classes" to mean that discrimination is acceptable except when it benefit men.

If targeted job advertisement based on gender is illegal then let make that the new norm. The extreme end on both side of the so called gender war will be against it and hopefully the majority in the middle will be in favor of it. I strongly doubt however that the law can currently be used to push this since so much of out reach programs have been using targeted job advertisement.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#220

Post by King-Aaron »

Endy wrote: post #211
rimliu wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook does not employ anyone here, it's about ads.

If you allow an unlawful ad to exist on your platform, you are knowingly violating the law and should be punished.

So if I were to say,

"Hey guys, you can get two ounces of pure, uncut cocaine right here, right now... Just send me cash via PayPal and I'll post it to you today!"

and no HN moderator removes this comment, then I have posted an unlawful advertisement on HN. By your standing, the operators are now violating the law as soon as a moderator glances across this shitpost, and would require punishment.

While that's clearly a ridiculous thing at face value - and I am likely coming across as obtuse by mentioning it - it highlights just what's wrong with your position I feel. I would consider it unrealistic to expect a large-scale content platform like facebook to be liable for individual ads. (Perhaps they could be proactive in reporting offenders to the correct authorities, but a knee-jerk punishment doesn't seem appropriate to me).

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