Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:22 AM UTC

yawaramin wrote: post #177

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, and it’s fairly ludicrous to even suppose it. I’m asking why we choose to emphasize this along some axes of characteristics and not along others. E.g. introvert / extravert axis is something employers are free to discriminate / harass along (e.g. open plan office layouts, less “outgoing” people often paid much less for the same job) even though it likely causes as much damage as any other axis that roughly splits…

> E.g. introvert / extravert axis is something employers are free to discriminate / harass along First of all–'introversion' is, scientifically speaking, not as clear-cut as what most people think it is ( https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/will-th... ). Medically speaking, it's not considered to be a disability. For conditions that are medically considered as disabilities, the relevant US law alread…

[flagged]

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

#202

Post by shkkmo » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:23 AM UTC

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #26

deogeo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being deliberate is not required: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact

> “Where a disparate impact is shown, the plaintiff can prevail without the necessity of showing intentional discrimination unless the defendant employer demonstrates that the practice or policy in question has a demonstrable relationship to the requirements of the job in question.[3] This is the "business necessity" defense.[1]” I wonder if you could argue that advertising in a particular way is a business necessity…

You can have an employment policy that favors CS grads when hiring programmers because, while the policy is effectively discriminatory, you can show that it directly relates to the job being hired for.

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

#203

Post by erichocean » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:25 AM UTC

aussieguy1234 wrote: post #191

Not just Facebook, but any targeted advertising platform that can target based on demographic could do this. Its not the first example of unethical behaviour using this technology. Alcohol gets targeted to Alcholics, Gambling gets targets to problem gamblers. Targeted advertising for certain purposes should be illegal, including employment ads, alcohol ads, gambing ads and any kind of political ad. There's just too m…

Or we could outright ban advertising everywhere, for any reason, full stop.

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

#204

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:26 AM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #202

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> “Where a disparate impact is shown, the plaintiff can prevail without the necessity of showing intentional discrimination unless the defendant employer demonstrates that the practice or policy in question has a demonstrable relationship to the requirements of the job in question.[3] This is the "business necessity" defense.[1]” I wonder if you could argue that advertising in a particular way is a business necessity…

You can have an employment policy that favors CS grads when hiring programmers because, while the policy is effectively discriminatory, you can show that it directly relates to the job being hired for.

It seems this would easily extend to many more types of job recruitment targeting then too, no? Or at least targeting job ads seems like it would be done for the exact same reasons as favoring CS grads in recruitment, until clearly proven otherwise?

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

#205

Post by pfdietz » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:29 AM UTC

throwawayjava wrote: post #125

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that really dodge the legal issue? I thought it had been shown that using proxies to discriminate is still illegal if the intention was to discriminate against a protected class.

It dodges the legal issue if you're very careful with your paper trail and get a sympathetic jury. You won't get a sympathetic jury. People don't have a lot of empathy for algorithms. Maybe empathy for the people who write them, and then only maybe. But you'll be up against a huge slate of expert witnesses explaining how we already have lots of open sourced methods for teasing out these sorts of indirect indicators.

And if you have an algorithm, that algorithm can be dragged into court itself. The prosecutor can show what happens when inputs are fed into it that are identical except for specific information (age, race, sex).

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

#206

Post by nl » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:30 AM UTC

shkkmo wrote: post #187

gbear605 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is how it works legally, yes.

No, that is not how it works. > The laws enforced by EEOC prohibit an employer or other covered entity from using neutral employment policies and practices that have a disproportionately negative effect on applicants or employees of a particular race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), or national origin, or on an individual with a disability or class of individuals w…

Are you a lawyer?

I'm not. But I don't believe you are right - advertising in a magazine doesn't exclude people just because their demographic doesn't target them.

If you ran a job ad for a make-up person in women's magazine there is nothing stopping a man who is also interested in make up seeing it and applying.

That is different to the Facebook system, where there was no way for someone from the excluded classes to see the ad.

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

#207

Post by shkkmo » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:31 AM UTC

throwawayjava wrote: post #125

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that really dodge the legal issue? I thought it had been shown that using proxies to discriminate is still illegal if the intention was to discriminate against a protected class.

It dodges the legal issue if you're very careful with your paper trail and get a sympathetic jury. You won't get a sympathetic jury. People don't have a lot of empathy for algorithms. Maybe empathy for the people who write them, and then only maybe. But you'll be up against a huge slate of expert witnesses explaining how we already have lots of open sourced methods for teasing out these sorts of indirect indicators.

The paper trail won't matter if your "accidentally" discriminatory policies are not directly related to the position you are hiring for. It is the effect of the employment policies that matter under US law.

> The laws enforced by EEOC prohibit an employer or other covered entity from using neutral employment policies and practices that have a disproportionately negative effect on applicants or employees of a particular race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), or national origin, or on an individual with a disability or class of individuals with disabilities, if the polices or practices at issue are not job-related and necessary to the operation of the business. [0]

[0] https://www.eeoc.gov//laws/practices/

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

#208

Post by nl » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:33 AM UTC

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…

Magazine buyer's aren't a protected class.

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

#209

Post by shkkmo » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:36 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #206

shkkmo wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, that is not how it works. > The laws enforced by EEOC prohibit an employer or other covered entity from using neutral employment policies and practices that have a disproportionately negative effect on applicants or employees of a particular race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), or national origin, or on an individual with a disability or class of individuals w…

Are you a lawyer? I'm not. But I don't believe you are right - advertising in a magazine doesn't exclude people just because their demographic doesn't target them. If you ran a job ad for a make-up person in women's magazine there is nothing stopping a man who is also interested in make up seeing it and applying. That is different to the Facebook system, where there was no way for someone from the excluded classes to…

I am not a lawyer, but I am directly quoting the US Government Agency that is responsible for enforcing these laws.

US employment law prohibits a large number of normally OK employment practices when they have a disparate impact on protected classes.

> For example, an employer's reliance on word-of-mouth recruitment by its mostly Hispanic work force may violate the law if the result is that almost all new hires are Hispanic. [0]

[0] https://www.eeoc.gov//laws/practices/

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

#210

Post by mlthoughts2018 » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 3:39 AM UTC

toss1 wrote: post #182

mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, and it’s fairly ludicrous to even suppose it. I’m asking why we choose to emphasize this along some axes of characteristics and not along others. E.g. introvert / extravert axis is something employers are free to discriminate / harass along (e.g. open plan office layouts, less “outgoing” people often paid much less for the same job) even though it likely causes as much damage as any other axis that roughly splits…

So, you now claim that: because there exist some characteristic axes that are not protected, that it is therefore impossible that the reason that some classes are protected cannot, by definition be in order to mitigate hare and provide equitable treatment? That is like saying: 'in 1875, because women didn't yet have the right to vote, the purpose of banning slavery could not have been to reduce harm to the slaves and…

I find it frustrating that rather than engaging with the question I asked, you rush to turn it around and say that I’m supposed to answer my own question, very obviously so you can take whatever my answer is (which you seem to have made up your mind to ridicule and disagree with prior to even knowing what it is) and put it down or gainsay it.

But at the risk of such unthinking ridicule I’ll say that personally my theory is something along the lines of homo hypocritus of economist Robin Hanson, similar in spirit to what is discussed (about wealth inequality) here:

- https://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/08/inequality-is-about-g...

I think we arrived at the particular protected classes we have now because people saw opportunities where someone could be shown to be harming a certain class and some other people (who couldn’t care less about the harm being caused) saw the opportunity to create a new way to take wealth from those people.

It turns out this was to society’s benefit mostly, and over time we use social norms and legal structure to increase its use as a humanitarian tool, but it almost surely was not invented for that reason.

I’d speculate that other characteristics like introversion never received this treatment because there weren’t preexisting social norms or religious cultural attachments to the class of introverted people, so in a mob justice sense you’d have a hard time taking wealth away from those in power over claimed mistreatment of this class. But for classes like gender identity or religious creed, there were preexisting big scale cultural norms / civic principles / etc. that allowed making the wealth-grab arguments catch on in the public eye.