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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

#371

Post by bduerst »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #222
bduerst wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pointless, loaded question. HR and legal depts that don't want their company to be sued for violating Title VII will make sure that they aren't recruiting only from Barnard, unless they're some bona fide exception (e.g. hiring models for women's clothing). This idea that they need to recruit from men's only career fairs is your own.

Doesn't your argument about company's not wanting to be sued work exactly the same for those advertising online?

Yes, hence the problem being raised by the article. Using targeted advertising on a protected class is illegal via Title VII.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#372

Post by f137 »

katzgrau wrote: post #262
gascan wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I see both sides of the argument, as long as the advertiser pays per view, it seems wrong to require the listing to target demographics that are almost certainly uninterested. Your example of listing a job in Men's Health but not Cosmopolitan seems good. Technically not a perfect analogue as a woman always could buy Men's Health, but in practice very similar. Spinning off into a different angle, what if an adve…

Fine tuning a message to an audience segment is something every marketer should do. When I first read the headline, this was the use case that seemed obvious. Different audience segments may want different things from a job. For example, an increasing number of workplaces are offering paid paternity leave. Maybe that's something you want to specifically mention to men.

You mean women are different from men? Really?

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#373

Post by sebleon »

There's a few reasonable reasons why FB should allow gender-specific job ad campaigns:

- Employers will likely see better ROI on their ad-spend by creating separate ad campaigns for every gender, with copy/creatives optimized for the target demo

- Employers may see that FB ads are ineffective for a specific gender, eg. fb ads are good for finding male candidates, while other marketing channels (radio, tv ads, etc) work better for female candidates.

Given these examples, I wouldn't blame Fb for allowing gender-specific ads. The onus should be on the employer to reach out to candidates of all genders throughout their recruiting campaigns, with gender balance when you aggregate efforts across different mediums.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#374

Post by IanCal »

busterarm wrote: post #353
IanCal wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's confusing me here is that this is what you seem to be saying is happening: 1. Facebook knows my gender. 2. Facebook tell advertisers they will select/not select me based on my gender. 3. Facebook, despite knowing my gender , completely disregard that information and try and guess it with exceptionally poor results.

I was speaking more about the industry as a whole originally. Facebook knows what you report as your gender but that's not a very good attribute to target off of. If I were doing e-commerce, for example, I would never use Facebook's implementation of that target (if they're going based off of what's reported to Facebook) because it would completely exclude gift purchases across genders. It would leave a ton of money…

We are very specifically on a topic about what facebook does, and what I was originally replying to you about was that I think your general findings are not particularly relevant when looking at facebook. You said this story is totally overblown because gender targeting isn't normally very accurate, but here it absolutely will be because a large number of people will accurately set this value on their own profile.

> I would never use Facebook's implementation of that target (if they're going based off of what's reported to Facebook) because it would completely exclude gift purchases across genders. It would leave a ton of money on the table and be a very stupid thing to do.

But we're not talking about gifts, we're talking about jobs.

> because any advertisers who rely on the accuracy of that attribute are stupid

But why would it be inaccurate for adverts on facebook for logged in facebook users?

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#375

Post by pbhjpbhj »

thecopy wrote: post #277
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"There are differences between genders." For sure. But you're not hiring a sex, you're hiring a person and individuals can match requirements for almost all types of position regardless of sex.

So if i have a job that requires a man, why should i be coerced into paying for showing the ads for women?

>for almost all types of position

You shouldn't IMO.

However, you should also understand that people do get jobs through other people seeing adverts - so worth bearing in mind.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#376

Post by why_is_it_good »

cuboidGoat wrote: post #317
wruza wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Provided that fb is a social network, lying to it must be lying to your environment?

Lying to your environment is an evolutionary benefit in a lot of cases. Is why we have species that impersonate other species, or that have camouflage patterning.

Or makeup.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#377

Post by psalminen »

f137 wrote: post #372
katzgrau wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine tuning a message to an audience segment is something every marketer should do. When I first read the headline, this was the use case that seemed obvious. Different audience segments may want different things from a job. For example, an increasing number of workplaces are offering paid paternity leave. Maybe that's something you want to specifically mention to men.

You mean women are different from men? Really?

https://youtu.be/YLaAgatOVSA?t=1m21s

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#378

Post by commandlinefan »

scarface74 wrote: post #282
cbovis wrote: post #101

On the fence about this one. Whilst targeting individual groups can certainly lead to inequalities there is the problem of tailoring ads to an audience. One way a company may wish to make their ads more appealing is by showing relatable people in adverts. If a company is running two variations of the same job advert, one featuring women and one featuring men, distributing coverage across the two variations evenly, th…

Yes it would still be a problem. I can’t speak for job postings but I can speak for real estate. There are certain things that you are not allowed to say in advertisement or as a real estate agent. Even in jobs, you would be walking a very fine line if an obviously pregnant woman walked in and you started mentioning that the place you work is great for mothers.

This sort of thing ought to disturb more people than it seems to - it should be really, really obvious when you're breaking the law, and it should be something that you can only do with actual harmful intent. This sort of thing goes a step worse, though, and actually makes _good_ intent unlawful.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#379

Post by tapatio »

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…

Yes. "People who like action movies" and "people who like romance novels" are not protected classes.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#380

Post by meowface »

mcny wrote: post #113
meowface wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> a recruiter can statistically prove that the most efficient use of their advertising dollars to hire for a coal mining job is by targeting only men, 1) is it sexist and/or unethical, and 2) should it be legal? I put this at the same level as only hiring women to teach elementary school. Yes, it is sexist and uneducated. No, it shouldn't be legal.

I think there's a difference between "hiring only men/women" and "advertising to only men/women". A company could launch a recruitment campaign which is only visible to one gender, but still not discriminate against applicants from the opposite gender. Presumably they have many more ways to list job openings than targeted Facebook ads, so they're not specifically excluding one gender from that job; just from the ad.
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