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Facebook enables gender discrimination in job ads: European human rights body

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Re: Facebook enables gender discrimination in job ads: European human rights body

#121
This reminds me of the Harvard Implicit Association test, particularly the gender career one. It will tell you if you implicitly associate certain careers with certain genders.

Since the overwhelming majority of, say, auto mechanics, are held by men, associating these roles with men is entirely accurate. Without saying anything of what it "should" be.

If your results were anything else, it suggests some kind of powerful overcompensating counter bias is as play. That your desire to see more gender balance in this role is so great, that you subconsciously already believe it to be normal. The real world is a deviation from where it "should" be. This strikes me as a rather pernicious position. Dogmatic. Almost religious.

Re: Facebook enables gender discrimination in job ads: European human rights body

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They accuse the algorithm of perpetuating gender stereotypes, but it's really society that's doing that. The ads are just trying to be the most efficient and in doing so they mirror the preferences of society. I don't know why anybody ever assumed that professions would ideally be 50-50 by gender, but that does seem to be something that people come into these arguments assuming. Put another way, what's the conversion…

>I don't know why anybody ever assumed that professions would ideally be 50-50 by gender It’s not that. We know that in most professions there’s no reason to assume that they should have a preferred gender. This means that even if pool of candidates is 99:1, that 1 candidate must have equal opportunities for employment. And that means no pre-screening through targeted ads.

Why does it mean that?

Re: Facebook enables gender discrimination in job ads: European human rights body

#123

> The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights said in a February 18 decision that Facebook’s algorithm reinforced gender stereotypes by mainly showing “typically female professions” to female Facebook users in the Netherlands and that Meta (META), the social platform’s owner, should have monitored and adjusted its algorithm to prevent that. > For example, ads for mechanic positions were predominantly shown to men, whi…

Totally agree. EU and Europe is going insane with crazy ass laws to punish american companies and regulate everything to death, while they allow their states get away with becoming totalitarian. #unreal

FYI, this practice has been ruled illegal in the US as well under employment discrimination laws.

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/historic-decision-digita...

Re: Facebook enables gender discrimination in job ads: European human rights body

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you explain why you think this?

Not the OP, but: This is actually a thorny problem. Say you have an advertising system that knows nothing about a user’s gender. This system, by construction, cannot vary its ad selections based on gender. But the system does remember whether users have expressed interest in the ads it has previously shown them. Now say you have a job that in general appeals to one gender almost exclusively. The system will, given ti…

> If the ad system stops showing ads for this job to the users who have demonstrated they don’t want to see them, is that gender discrimination?

According to US employment law, yes, actually. That is something called disparate impact (unintentional discrimination), and it is illegal in the same way disparate treatment (intentional discrimination) is.

Re: Facebook enables gender discrimination in job ads: European human rights body

#125
post #28

Isn't Europe where headshots are a mandatory part of résumés? I'm sure that Officially Doesn't contribute to discrimination.

It's not mandatory, but a headshot is indeed expected in the Europass CV format: https://www.google.com/search?q=europass+cv&tbs=imgo:1&udm=2 .

I don't think many people use it, though.

Re: Facebook enables gender discrimination in job ads: European human rights body

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They accuse the algorithm of perpetuating gender stereotypes, but it's really society that's doing that. The ads are just trying to be the most efficient and in doing so they mirror the preferences of society. I don't know why anybody ever assumed that professions would ideally be 50-50 by gender, but that does seem to be something that people come into these arguments assuming. Put another way, what's the conversion…

>I don't know why anybody ever assumed that professions would ideally be 50-50 by gender It’s not that. We know that in most professions there’s no reason to assume that they should have a preferred gender. This means that even if pool of candidates is 99:1, that 1 candidate must have equal opportunities for employment. And that means no pre-screening through targeted ads.

So say a school has funding to find 10 candidates for a job using the biased algorithms. Are you saying it’s best to force the school to use an algorithm such that they only find 5 with it still unlikely that any of those 5 are of a different sex. In effect forcing schools to hire a worse member of staff(due to reduced candidate pool.)

Re: Facebook enables gender discrimination in job ads: European human rights body

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was discrimination for very very long periods of times. For example, Jews weren’t allowed to hold many professions for a very long time in Europe. Black people in America were slaves and continue to feel the effects of discrimination today. It still exists in other cultures today. The idea that capitalism solves discrimination magically does not appear to be borne out in any evidence I can find. Economic effici…

"The idea that capitalism solves discrimination magically does not appear to be borne out in any evidence I can find." We should distinguish between formal legal disabilities ("Jews are prohibited from X by law") from informal discrimination that is the target of modern anti-discrimination law ("Sean Murphy does not want to employ any goddamn Englishmen"). Emancipation has a reasonably good, though not perfect, recor…

And the “untouchable” cast in India? No laws against them but still discriminated against socially and economically and this discrimination even has even been transported to the US despite India and the US being nominally free markets.

It’s the paradox of tolerance - if you allow informal intolerance to fester it can metastasize into institutional and structural intolerance. But it’s quaint to suggest that economic market forces somehow themselves remove discrimination.

Re: Facebook enables gender discrimination in job ads: European human rights body

#128
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. What you eventually get is women not getting a variety of jobs they could apply to and a death of men in professions that actually need more men (e.g. nurses, teachers etc.) We already been through this. It's not ancient history

I think gendered professions are the norm across ancient history. Algorithmic advertising didn't create this.

Child labor, keeping women uneducated and many other practices were the norm across ancient history. Who are we to question the wisdom of our ancestors.

Re: Facebook enables gender discrimination in job ads: European human rights body

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't know why anybody ever assumed that professions would ideally be 50-50 by gender It’s not that. We know that in most professions there’s no reason to assume that they should have a preferred gender. This means that even if pool of candidates is 99:1, that 1 candidate must have equal opportunities for employment. And that means no pre-screening through targeted ads.

So say a school has funding to find 10 candidates for a job using the biased algorithms. Are you saying it’s best to force the school to use an algorithm such that they only find 5 with it still unlikely that any of those 5 are of a different sex. In effect forcing schools to hire a worse member of staff(due to reduced candidate pool.)

In what part of Multiverse funding is allocated for use of biased algorithms that enable discrimination?

Re: Facebook enables gender discrimination in job ads: European human rights body

#130
post #48
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. What you eventually get is women not getting a variety of jobs they could apply to and a death of men in professions that actually need more men (e.g. nurses, teachers etc.) We already been through this. It's not ancient history

Keep in mind that these advertising algorithms are never 100% pushing jobs catered for a specific group, they keep a % of exploration. https://www.tutorialspoint.com/machine_learning/machine_lear... This is exploration vs exploitation dilemma. For example let's say that 10% of ads are thrown randomly, and from these random rolls these patterns are discovered: > [Denver+ years+men]: mechanics +10% > [Denver+ years+men…

> One exception, advertisers can artificially restrict saying "I want only men between 30-40" in their targeting filters.

> Then what Meta can do ? Not much.

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“We do not allow advertisers to target these ads based on gender,” Settle said in a 2023 statement.

--- end quote ---

Meta can start by doing what they claim they are doing?

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