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Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

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Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#151

Post by scarface74 »

nkrisc wrote: post #64
sturgill wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But should Ebony be allowed to market ads on Facebook and exclude white people? I honestly don’t know where I come down on this issue: it feels different to say, “we have a better ROI if we exclude certain demographics from seeing our ads” than to say “black people can’t eat at this diner.” Let’s take a company like REI: is it wrong for them to put their stores in places that are most profitable? Should luxury good c…

The short answer is: it depends. I don't think you'll run into much trouble in excluding women from your ads for beard care products, but you might of you're excluding them from your ads for housing. I think you have to consider intent as well as outcome.

There is no might there are specific laws governing advertising when it comes to jobs and housing that don’t apply to other areas.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#152

Post by scarface74 »

eloff wrote: post #35

Nothing good can come from sticking my neck out on this, but: If I were paying for advertising for a software engineering position I'd get much better ROI by excluding women and older demographics simply because they're much less likely to be suitable for the job, statistically speaking, when we're talking about the wider population in general and not just software engineers. Not because they're less capable, but bec…

It doesn’t matter if it is fair or not. It is specifically illegal to discriminate in advertising for housing and jobs.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#153

Post by aianus »

kuzimoto wrote: post #140
nicoburns wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK changed the law fairly recently to prevent price differentiation by gender.

I feel like this is just a good way to make women pay as much as men, instead of lowering prices for men to pay as much as women.

If the market were efficient the new price would be somewhere in the middle. Is this what happened in the UK? I don’t know.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#154

Post by mirimir »

throwawayjava wrote: post #130
mirimir wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These aren't arbitrary judgment calls. There are laws. And sure, the existence of those laws might be arbitrary. But the laws themselves are specific.

Except the existence of laws against racial/age discrimination in housing and employment are not arbitrary. Those laws were passed in response to actual and widespread discriminatory behavior in the mid 20th century.

OK, maybe arbitrary isn't exactly the right word. I meant that there's no indisputable link between ethics/morality and law.

You say that they "were passed in response to actual and widespread discriminatory behavior". That's true. But they wouldn't have been passed, notwithstanding discrimination, without enough political support (of one sort or another).

I mean, there's also been discrimination in health insurance rates based on preexisting conditions. And gender-based discrimination in vehicle insurance rates. The Affordable Care Act more-or-less restricted the first. But the second is still the norm in the US.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#155

Post by avani »

sturgill wrote: post #56
nkrisc wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. If you place an ad on Facebook for housing and choose to exclude people who identify as "black", there's no way for those people to find your ad, save for creating a new Facebook account and pretending to be white. Anyone is welcome to purchase a copy of Ebony magazine. It's targeted, but it's not exclusive.

But should Ebony be allowed to market ads on Facebook and exclude white people? I honestly don’t know where I come down on this issue: it feels different to say, “we have a better ROI if we exclude certain demographics from seeing our ads” than to say “black people can’t eat at this diner.” Let’s take a company like REI: is it wrong for them to put their stores in places that are most profitable? Should luxury good c…

Um.. I think most luxury goods stores are in inner cities.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#156

Post by kjs3 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #12
profunctor wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to be a textbook form of discrimination.

It's not, though. When I buy a page in Cosmo or something, I'm doing that with the intent and result that mostly women will see it. If targeted ads were illegal, it's hard to see how any publication with non-representative demographics could sell ads at all.

Are you actually equating placing ads for makeup or intimates with placing ads for a job? You are the very definition of the problem.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#157

Post by paulryanrogers »

chii wrote: post #63
conanbatt wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are using the legal definition of discrimination, and I am using the economics definition of discrimination.

and the courts only care about the legal definition.

And Voters should care if their elected legislators permit injustices to remain technically legal

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#158

Post by dang »

GhettoMaestro wrote: post #51
eloff wrote: post #35

Nothing good can come from sticking my neck out on this, but: If I were paying for advertising for a software engineering position I'd get much better ROI by excluding women and older demographics simply because they're much less likely to be suitable for the job, statistically speaking, when we're talking about the wider population in general and not just software engineers. Not because they're less capable, but bec…

> I shouldn't have the government mandating that I can't tune my advertising campaign for ROI, which is basically the only point of running one if the first place. Then find another country.... dipshit. In the United States this is illegal. I would say "sorry", but I am not. If you really hold this view, kill yourself.

You can't post like this here, regardless of how wrong another comment is. In addition to contributing to destroying this place, it discredits what you're saying—which if your position is correct, means that you discredit the truth. That's a bad thing to do to the truth. So please don't comment like this on HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Edit: it unfortunately turns out the you've been breaking the site guidelines egregiously and repeatedly. As you know, we ban accounts for doing that. Would you mind just reviewing them and taking the spirit of the site to heart, so we don't have to ban you? It's not hard to use HN as intended if you want to.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#159

Post by qtplatypus »

kortilla wrote: post #122
dragonwriter wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But no one said it is was ethical in the case where it is legal, so if that was the intended question, not only is it phrased wrong but it starts from an unsupported premise, to wit, that people in the discussion believe that one is ethical and the other not.

If someone asks why something is legal, the answer they are looking for is never “because the laws allow it”.

It can be “which laws allow it” and the person answered that.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#160

Post by scarface74 »

aianus wrote: post #59
dragonwriter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “It’s not cost efficient” isn’t a valid reason to discriminate against people, if you ask me. Moreover, it's not, in general, a legal reason in the US to discriminate where a protected class is involved, including, in employment, age over 40 or gender.

Why is it legal to charge men more for car insurance? It’s definitely more profitable that way, but maybe so is the targeting in the article.

Because there is no specific law that bans charging men and women different prices for car insurance. There are specific laws regarding discriminatory advertising with employment and housing.
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