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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

#271

Post by eropple »

eloff wrote: post #112
dangus wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“It’s not cost efficient” isn’t a valid reason to discriminate against people, if you ask me. An analogy to your justification: the most cost efficient thing to do with hazardous chemicals is to dump them down the drain.

Yes, that's true. It seems to be illegal, so talking about ROI is really beside the point. And it's a pretty hypothetical situation. I'm just trying to think why the companies might have taken this approach apart from outright discrimination.

What, in the stretch of American labor history, compels you to think that individual companies need or have ever needed more than "outright discrimination" to do something that is not in their economic best interests?

Companies make stupid decisions all the time.

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

#272

Post by jimmaswell »

kjs3 wrote: post #194
DoreenMichele wrote: post #24

I have mixed feelings about this. I am absolutely aware this can be a means to intentionally exclude specific groups due to prejudice and can be a polite way to do terrible things. I get that. But the reality is that the modern world seems to seriously suck at figuring out how to help people find the right kind of job for themselves or help employers find the right people for the job. I keep thinking "Surely, there m…

The "modern world" sucks at figuring out how to help people find the right kind of job for one of two reasons: 1) they keep thinking about gender and age as qualifiers for jobs for which those factors have absolutely zero relevance (girls are bad at math! Old people can't learn new things!), or 2) They invent the delusion that gender and age disqualifies you for a job (girls will just get pregnant and leave! oldster…

I feel like we might as well be honest that age has an impact on cognition. You do get slower at learning new things but valuable experience can be big, as someone said here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20609100

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

#273

Post by jimmaswell »

gridlockd wrote: post #211
WomanCanCode wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. As a female software developer, I would like to see those ads so I can get better jobs. If I don't even see the ads, then I would not even know about opportunity. Without opportunity, I cannot really progress. If only men see the ads, apply jobs and get interviews, then the employers may think that they shouldn't advertise to women. This is just circular thinking.

If the employer targeted the ad to exclude you based on some criteria, you don't actually have the opportunity, whether you see the ad or not. If anything, you'd be wasting your time applying for a job that you didn't know excluded you. If the employer targeted the ad just to save money by advertising to a demographic that is more likely to be responsive, that's a different story. Then you might as well argue that yo…

These same things were said in the civil rights movement. Parts of the company may be biased now but letting more of these groups apply has an impact. The specific interviewers you get might not share the bias and more members of the group there will contribute to the culture changing over time as people get used to it.

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

#274

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

peteretep wrote: post #251

> Not just Facebook, but any targeted advertising platform that can target based on demographic could do this. I'd like to point out that specifically you can NOT do this on Facebook any more, or at least not if Facebook find it out. They make you mark your ads as being job posts, and remove demographic targeting from that. The headline here is irritating, because the headline being shown is two years old. The headli…

Seems pointless to me. What are they gonna do, hire those folks they meant to exclude anyway when they show up?

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

#275

Post by luckylion »

tnel77 wrote: post #253
erichocean wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

When someone says “full stop,” I like to wonder if they think that that makes their belief more correct than it otherwise would have been interpreted.

I tend to read it as "and I don't intend to have any exceptions". More as a statement setting the limits of their claim/suggestion than "and this is not to be discussed".

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

#276

Post by abdullahkhalids »

wesammikhail wrote: post #33
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Targeted ads for some things, like jobs or housing, are considered discrimination. Ads for most products can be targeted.

What is the difference between those classes of goods? What non-arbitrary rule should we use as a society to determine if a product/service can be targeted or not? Seems to me that every time this subject comes up, an arbitrary list of things are considered protected by whoever is making that point.

There is actually a minimal agreed upon set of goods, espoused in the Universal declaration of human rights (or your country's equivalent).

For instance, travel services must be free from discrimination:

> Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.

Or buying property

> Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

Or the issues of this thread

> Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

Or general social servies

> Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, ...

specifically education

> Everyone has the right to education.

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

#277

Post by gnicholas »

chii wrote: post #65
yardie wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If you are, for example, placing rental or property ads that filter by race, age, or gender that is the official description of it.

and yet, by having a profile of the user, it is quite possible to "easily" find proxies for the above traits, and target those proxies instead, and thus dodge the legality issue. For example, using income.

Other commenters have said that disparate impact is enough to trigger liability, so targeting proxy characteristics would not help in that case.

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

#278

Post by blub »

keiferski wrote: post #268
blub wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Step two would be banning product placement. ;)

Practically impossible. Entire shows will then be written and created around a product line or brand.

If an entire show is created around a product it will be easy to prove it's against those hypothetical rules. I am more concerned about subtler forms, but it seems that forced paid product placement disclosures are working just fine.

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

#279

Post by black_puppydog »

MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #274
peteretep wrote: post #251

> Not just Facebook, but any targeted advertising platform that can target based on demographic could do this. I'd like to point out that specifically you can NOT do this on Facebook any more, or at least not if Facebook find it out. They make you mark your ads as being job posts, and remove demographic targeting from that. The headline here is irritating, because the headline being shown is two years old. The headli…

Seems pointless to me. What are they gonna do, hire those folks they meant to exclude anyway when they show up?

While we're at it: why bother with any sort of anti-discrimination effort? Haters' gonna hate after all. /s

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

#280

Post by keiferski »

blub wrote: post #278
keiferski wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Practically impossible. Entire shows will then be written and created around a product line or brand.

If an entire show is created around a product it will be easy to prove it's against those hypothetical rules. I am more concerned about subtler forms, but it seems that forced paid product placement disclosures are working just fine.

I think you are drastically underestimating the ability of media companies to develop content which subtly includes specific ideas, values or products. This already happens - it is not a future theoretical scenario.
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