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

propublica.org

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

#221

Post by macintux »

gleenn wrote: post #217
macintux wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Director of engineering at a former employer once said in the span of 30 seconds: “we’re trying to hire more diversity” and “please reach out to your social network”. To an audience of 98% white males. The director acknowledged the incongruity, thankfully, but never solved the problem.

I think you're assuming white males don't know how to suggest females and non-whites. We may be statistically more likely to hang out with other white males but I'm pretty sure I can suggest people besides them.

I can and did, but that doesn’t alter the fact that the preponderance of our collective networks were white males. That’s not a strategy for significant diversification.

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

#222

Post by conanbatt »

dangus wrote: post #66
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.

“Officer, you’re just using the legal definition of speeding!”

A unique characteristic about those that base their values purely on the law is that it only takes changing the law to turn them to your side.

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

#223

Post by shkkmo »

wesammikhail wrote: post #29
mav3rick wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but you don't control if a man or an old person can buy the magazine or not.

Serious question: How is that relevant though? Here is how I think about it: If my intention is to discriminate against men and publish an ad in a female magazine, sure, I cant control if a man buys and sees the ad or not. But discrimination was my intention to begin with regardless of how effective my efforts were. Besides, those efforts will be pretty effective. Instead of magazine advertising being 100% effective…

> How is that relevant though?

It is not. Your intent to discriminate is not necessary for you to fall afoul of US equal opportunity laws. Demonstrating disparate impact of your employment policies on a protected class without a valid business is can be sufficient for you to lose your case.

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

#224

Post by SamReidHughes »

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…

Banning targeted advertising means the vast majority of people see irrelevant employment ads. Every lumberjack and security guard on Facebook will see useless software engineering ads, or nursing, or whatever is the hard to recruit field du jour. This means less people see ads for jobs for them, and that hurts untalented, unskilled regular people the most, because their job ads aren’t going to outcompete highly paid fields on price.

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

#225

Post by basq »

greggman2 wrote: post #220
erichocean wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Interesting. You just advertised an idea. That should be banned?

Think it's safe to assume gp meant paid advertising.

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

#226

Post by m0zg »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #172
formercoder wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it biased in a bad way? It’s really hard to measure someone’s ability to do a job, especially for a more senior role. Therefore, I feel comfortable hiring people recommended to me by others that I trust.

Because white men that dominate those jobs already typically know white men to recommend for those jobs.

I must have spent the last 20 years in a parallel universe where every single hiring manager would like nothing more than to hire a minority or a woman because of corporate edicts. At Microsoft today, for instance, they have _quotas_ for hiring women (I don't know about minorities, but they probably have quotas for that, too), and if you don't meet the quota, you're kinda fucked as a manager. At Google, when the hiring committee is in doubt the official position is to make a "hire" decision if the applicant is a woman and "no" if the applicant is a man. A female hiring committee member told me she saw no issue with this policy.

Yet still, very few females apply. I had interviewed 100+ people for Google. Of them IIRC 8 were women and 1 was hired. You can't get more women into the profession if they choose not to apply.

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

#227

Post by dschuetz »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #224
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…

Banning targeted advertising means the vast majority of people see irrelevant employment ads. Every lumberjack and security guard on Facebook will see useless software engineering ads, or nursing, or whatever is the hard to recruit field du jour. This means less people see ads for jobs for them, and that hurts untalented, unskilled regular people the most, because their job ads aren’t going to outcompete highly paid…

Regarding ads for consumer goods, you're right. But ads for jobs should not be handled the same way. That's another market entirely. Imagine you being happy with your current employment, but you are bombarded with "outstanding employment offer" ads from shady recruiters? Not such a bright idea, right?

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

#228

Post by greggman2 »

spamizbad wrote: post #147
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone tell me, does Cosmopolitan magazine run job ads?

It doesn't.

Working Mother Magazine runs ads for jobs if someone wants a more concrete example to use one way or another

https://jobs.workingmother.com/

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

#229

Post by greggman2 »

shkkmo wrote: post #186
zaroth wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so are you allowed to place employment ads in Cosmo? Is it Ok just because it’s overwhelming likely to be women who see it, versus algorithmically targeting women?

> Ok, so are you allowed to place employment ads in Cosmo? Yes, if you take care to balance your ad placement so that your job opening advertising policy is not biased against protected classes. > because it’s overwhelming likely to be women who see it, versus algorithmically targeting women? That doesn't matter. What matters is the end effect of the advertising policy.

In that case the targeted facebook ads would not be illegal if they were balanced by targeted ads at the groups excluded from the first? Or also not illegal if it can't be proven to have had an actual effect?

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

#230

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

dragonwriter wrote: post #190
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That kind of thing is why the doctrine of disparate impact was developed. There are a lot of messy edge cases (everything has some correlation with one or another protected class), but if I end up never advertising to men the fact that I'm using a neural network won't protect me.

> That kind of thing is why the doctrine of disparate impact was developed. It's really not; disparate impact deals with it, but the doctrine was articulated in a case with ample evidence that the policy at issue, though facially neutral, was adopted as a deliberate replacement for explicit racial discrimination with an intent to maintain it's discriminatory effect and without other business purpose, and the doctrine…

The doctrine was first articulated in a case (Griggs v. Duke Power Co.) where the Supreme Court explicitly held the employer didn't intend to discriminate.
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