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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

#131

Post by ghusto »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #124
tmoertel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Remember, we make laws and they are there to make society work/better. So whilst the legal answer is "yes", I presume the real question was "_Is_ this gender discrimination?", as in; let's actually think about it instead of fobbing it off to the current state of the law.

If the law is nonsensical or harmful, it can and should be changed.

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

#132

Post by inemesitaffia »

tmoertel wrote: post #79
paperhatwriter wrote: post #4

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…

Is this really what's happening or are the ads tuned by the advertiser for men, or for people who have preferences for the things men want.

Is Facebook selecting the targeted groups or delivering ads to them?

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

#133

Post by ivan_gammel »

hunterpayne wrote: post #112
ivan_gammel wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematicians who are paid for their research are incentivized to prove theorems. It doesn’t make their proofs wrong.

The reason we think their proofs are correct is that other mathematicians without incentives say they are correct. Also, they show their work. By your logic, we should believe everything any salesperson says.

No, we should not believe everything that a salesperson says. I just demonstrated that „incentive“ argument does not make sense. It’s false generalization.

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

#134

Post by Timon3 »

potatoproduct wrote: post #94
Timon3 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No? Our society doesn't treat jobs as equally important as all kinds of content. Having rules around content recommendation around jobs is easily doable without banning any kind of content recommendation. Or did I miss obvious sarcasm?

The content you consume has a large influence in your education and career. If you get recommendations for "Technology" and someone of the opposite sex doesn't its completely discriminatory. If you don't think its a problem then you likely dont understand how recommendation systems work. The only way recommendations could work is you would explicitly state preferences for everything upfront and no engagement data is…

I do understand how recommendation systems work, thank you.

You've written twice in this thread that you'd need to ban any kind of content recommendation system. Is that what you're advocating for? Your comments read to me as the opposite - you're saying that the only way to 100% solve this issue is by banning any recommendation system, so we shouldn't do anything instead.

This is, of course, not how we treat almost any facet of our society. No law covers 100% of cases, yet we're fine implementing new laws if they improve the situation. Why can't we do the same here?

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

#135

Post by Ekaros »

Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote: post #111
rowanG077 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taken to its logical conclusion you essentially have to make targeted ads illegal. Now it's gender, next it's race, then it's socioeconomic standing. Then it's age. Etc etc.

I think making targeted ads illegal is a great idea all by itself. It would kneecap the entire surveillance and data industry built around tracking people for f**g ads. The gov will still track you though, but that's a different nut to crack.

I wonder if this should also apply to more traditional areas. Say TV and magazines. So advertisers should not be able to choose which demographics they target via proxy. That is you should not be able to choose say magazine or tv slot based on demographics.

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

#136

Post by Esophagus4 »

ghusto wrote: post #131
Esophagus4 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Remember, we make laws and they are there to make society work/better. So whilst the legal answer is "yes", I presume the real question was "_Is_ this gender discrimination?", as in; let's actually think about it instead of fobbing it off to the current state of the law. If the law is nonsensical or harmful, it can and should be changed.

> "_Is_ this gender discrimination?"

Still a yes from me. I see no reason to change the law to prevents people from being discriminated against in employment opportunities, And that was implied in my comment. I was not “fobbing” to the current laws, I was saying, this is illegal and for good reason.

Whether intentional or not, you cannot advertise a job to only certain people based on targeting by a protected characteristic.

You may not like it, but you haven’t proven to me that the law is nonsensical. I’m actually a little skeptical you are able to describe the current law you wish to change - see: Chesterton’s Fence.

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

#137

Post by lores »

tmoertel wrote: post #79
paperhatwriter wrote: post #4

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…

A company the size of Facebook has far more than enough resources to know that different ads have different requirements, if only legal ones, because moral ones seem hopelessly quaint. I, a know-nothing engineer not working in HR or advertisement, would have raised a question to Product asking whether job ads had to be excepted from the regular optimisations and advertised equally to everyone. Why didn't Facebook think about it? The answer is they did, they just chose to ignore it because money is more important, or at least the perception of choosing money over morals or legality.

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

#138

Post by rpdillon »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #109
rpdillon wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> invest considerably more resources Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't we just talking about going to a job board and searching for the job you're interested in?

Let’s say you have group A and group B, both of which have suitable candidates for the job. The information about the job is available via pull (job boards) and push (ads) channels. A has access to both channels, B only to pull. In this case A has statistically higher chances to get that job than B, if they have no other differences. If B is already disadvantaged, this just increases the gap. Your question is, in thi…

It sounds like this is about going to a job board and just searching for the job you want. That's the big barrier we're discussing?

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

#139

Post by rpdillon »

troupo wrote: post #128
rpdillon wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not using ancient history to justify it. I'm saying it's been around longer than algorithmic advertising. The comment I'm replying to suggested that this was caused by algorithmic advertising, which is a non-sequitur.

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

#140

Post by rpdillon »

em-bee wrote: post #106
rpdillon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would need to connect men not being as prevalent in child care profession roles to some sort of systemic harm. Or women not being as prevalent in construction worker roles. Just because there's a discrepancy between the two genders doesn't mean there's systemic harm stemming from it.

the harm in child care and education should be obvious: children need role models of both genders. in no other profession is it as important for gender parity to be enforced. so at least in that area there is most certainly a systemic harm if one gender dominates.

It's not obvious at all. I would never count on my children getting their role models from their daycare providers.
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