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Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

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Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#11

Meh, is it really important. There are many reasons to want younger workers, and there are many reasons you shouldn't want younger workers. I don't find it necessary for the government to step in to help one of the highest paid fields in america.

It is a violation of very important civil rights laws in the US. Imagine a company using Facebook to advertise job openings to white candidates only.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#12

Meh, is it really important. There are many reasons to want younger workers, and there are many reasons you shouldn't want younger workers. I don't find it necessary for the government to step in to help one of the highest paid fields in america.

There may be "reasons", but are they ethical? I'd like an example of such a reason, if you have one.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#13
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post #2

Is this different than advertising in a magazine that has a specific reader demographic? Or would that get a company in trouble too, if a the court rules that the intent was to exclude a given group?

It's against U.S. federal law for employers to discriminate against people aged 40-or-over on the basis of age. Having job ads that only younger people could see would seemingly fall afoul of that law: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm

I guess the question of targeting different ads at different demographics needs to be answered -- is that ok?

Is it ok to recruit at a college job fair?

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#15
I'm astonished that facebook is successfully able to pull the "we're a platform, its not our fault people are using it illegally" excuse here. There is a huge difference between allowing people to freely post content on places like FB, twitter, or Reddit, and selling access the attention of people that fit specific characteristics.

How long until the tech giants are held accountable for willfully skirting decades of civil rights legislation.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#16
post #10
post #2

Is this different than advertising in a magazine that has a specific reader demographic? Or would that get a company in trouble too, if a the court rules that the intent was to exclude a given group?

The article mentions this scenario. It points out that anyone can purchase a copy of Teen Vogue (for example) but there's nothing you can do about ads that Facebook won't show you.

Well technically, anyone could conduct their online activities so that they fit into a profile that makes them look younger. Of course, now that I look at it again, the article did mention having a specific age selector in the ad, so that part I think would be definitely illegal.

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#17
post #3
post #2

Is this different than advertising in a magazine that has a specific reader demographic? Or would that get a company in trouble too, if a the court rules that the intent was to exclude a given group?

It's against U.S. federal law for employers to discriminate against people aged 40-or-over on the basis of age. Having job ads that only younger people could see would seemingly fall afoul of that law: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm

So Facebook has asked for immunity regarding discriminatory ads, it wasn't clear to me what the status of that was

And the presence of a targeted ad doesn't prevent excluded people from actually going to a job posting site. If the job posting site was doing this with people's Facebook session (or other way of knowing age), I would be alarmed and appalled. If a company was doing this on their career site I was be up in arms.

But Facebook running ads where some of them happen to be job related ads in the same place that other random ads appear? Ehhhhhhhhh

Re: Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads

#18
post #3
post #2

Is this different than advertising in a magazine that has a specific reader demographic? Or would that get a company in trouble too, if a the court rules that the intent was to exclude a given group?

It's against U.S. federal law for employers to discriminate against people aged 40-or-over on the basis of age. Having job ads that only younger people could see would seemingly fall afoul of that law: https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm

I doubt it runs afoul of that law.

Segmentation is a common characteristic of online advertising campaigns. A sophisticated advertiser never shows the same types of ads to young and old audiences (especially on Facebook) because the two audiences react drastically different. If your goal is to run efficient campaigns, you will always separate the two.

As a result, the advertiser can simply claim that they separated the two, and then realized they simply couldn't afford the CPC of the older audience (i.e. the ROI didn't make sense). Alternatively, they could just set a very high bid for the older audience and never get any traffic to those segments.

Overall, I think you'd be hard pressed to prove discriminatory intent even if it exists.

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