Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#151

Post by mbrumlow » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 6:37 AM UTC

Not that I agree or disagree with the practice I can't help to see how people are so quick to want to talk about limiting what looks very much like free speech.

If I wanted to spread a message person to person on the street. I think I would find it odd if the government had a say in who I told the message to.

All this seems to be I'd a automated system of doing just that. So if I knew of a job at company X and I decided to tell my buddy John (cis gender male) but did not tell Jenny (cis grander female) would I be breaking any sort of rule? Or would I be forced to always find at lest one person of the opposite gender to also inform of the job?

In any case why do we care what Facebook is doing. They are simply a tool. U less you are suggesting that advertisers should not be able to do anything based off gender...

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#152

Post by Double_a_92 » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 6:39 AM UTC

patmcc wrote: post #7

I'm a bit mixed about this; it is clearly discriminatory to publish a job ad that says "women need not apply", but it doesn't feel inherently discriminatory to advertise a job in, say, "Men's Health" but not "Cosmopolitan" magazine. Or to advertise on a particular television channel or program (whose viewers may not match the population at large). That's just how advertising works. Is that crazy? Would this be differ…

What if they would advertise in a tech journal? Most readers are still probably male... But the journal is related to the job. Would that be discriminatory?

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#153

Post by basicplus2 » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 6:41 AM UTC

Its a bit silly to expect companies like facebook do the job of police or a government regulator.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#154

Post by caseysoftware » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 7:01 AM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #21

patmcc wrote: post #7

I'm a bit mixed about this; it is clearly discriminatory to publish a job ad that says "women need not apply", but it doesn't feel inherently discriminatory to advertise a job in, say, "Men's Health" but not "Cosmopolitan" magazine. Or to advertise on a particular television channel or program (whose viewers may not match the population at large). That's just how advertising works. Is that crazy? Would this be differ…

No one is excluded though. A woman can buy Men's Health ; a man can buy Cosmopolitan . What Facebook is doing is enabling straight up exclusion of genders from advertising, which is completely different in the eyes of the law.

If someone - anyone buys Men's Health then they're probably interested in the topics they cover. If someone has a browsing profile and Likes that relate to those topics, they will get categorized very similarly. As a result, they are likely to see the ads accordingly.

Right now, Google thinks I'm a 65yo+ woman with high income. When I turn off my ad blocker (rarely!), I see ads related to retirement, AARP, etc.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#155

Post by gdfasfklshg4 » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 7:02 AM UTC

eridius wrote: post #150

Darmani wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Duolingo has a policy of only recruiting from schools that have an above-average percent of women in their CS program. How do you feel about that?

Wow I have a lot more respect for Duolingo now. That's great!

May I ask why this increases your respect for them?

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#156

Post by wutbrodo » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 7:02 AM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #102

bobthepanda wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is excluded though. A woman can buy Men's Health ; a man can buy Cosmopolitan . What Facebook is doing is enabling straight up exclusion of genders from advertising, which is completely different in the eyes of the law.

That's not really how digital advertising targeting works though. In fact, they go to great lengths to make sure you illegally exclude by a class (Google is especially strict about this) and don't transmit anything that is considered PII or "potentially PII". Gender, like IP address, is in the potentially PII realm. What this actually is going to do is target "people interested in typically male interests". That is g…

> What this actually is going to do is target "people interested in typically male interests". That is going to end up including men, women and trans men.

Not to be too pedantic, but it would include some transwomen as well. Just seemed odd to go out of your way to include the other three categories on those two axes and leave this one out.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#157

Post by daenz » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 7:11 AM UTC

wutbrodo wrote: post #156

busterarm wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really how digital advertising targeting works though. In fact, they go to great lengths to make sure you illegally exclude by a class (Google is especially strict about this) and don't transmit anything that is considered PII or "potentially PII". Gender, like IP address, is in the potentially PII realm. What this actually is going to do is target "people interested in typically male interests". That is g…

> What this actually is going to do is target "people interested in typically male interests". That is going to end up including men, women and trans men. Not to be too pedantic, but it would include some transwomen as well. Just seemed odd to go out of your way to include the other three categories on those two axes and leave this one out.

>Just seemed odd to go out of your way to include the other three categories on those two axes and leave this one out.

Nothing in their post suggests they "went out of their way" to exclude a particular demographic. To people who do not deal with trans issues on a daily basis, it can be easy to overlook all the nuances of being trans. Calling someone out in a way that accuses deliberate motivations is borderline toxic, no matter what social issue you're voicing.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#158

Post by Sol- » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 7:12 AM UTC

Even if they remove the explicit gender category in their advertising interface, it seems relatively trivial to find proxies for gender (or race, or age, for that matter) to target a specific subgroup of people with your ads.

It's possible to algorithmically bias the ad-targeting algorithms in such a way to achieve parity in whatever sensitive attribute you are concerned about, but that will come at the expense of utility of the targeting (since you will have to show it to more people who you actually don't want to target, just to achieve gender/race/age equality) - of course, that might not be so bad if your hypothesis is that the advertiser has a bad mental model of his target group to begin with and you think that Facebook should force him to make it more egalitarian.

I don't think that will happen though, Facebook might remove explicit gender targeting, but I doubt it will do much to help with biased ads since people will just use proxies for gender etc. instead.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#159

Post by sievebrain » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 7:16 AM UTC

zeroname wrote: post #134

gehwartzen wrote: post #118

For those interested here is a link to The Code of Federal Regulations: Title 29 (Labor): Part 1604 “Guidelines On Discrimination Because of Sex” which describes the relevant legal requirements/interpretations pertaining to employer sex discrimination. https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2011-title29-vol4/xml/CFR-...

" § 1604.5 Job opportunities advertising. It is a violation of title VII for a help-wanted advertisement to indicate a preference, limitation, specification, or discrimination based on sex unless sex is a bona fide occupational qualification for the particular job involved. The placement of an advertisement in columns classified by publishers on the basis of sex, such as columns headed “Male” or “Female,” will be con…

This does imply the TSA are breaking the law given the story above about how they "strongly encourage" women to apply.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#160

Post by sidstling » Wed, Sep 19, 2018, 7:17 AM UTC

ALittleLight wrote: post #38

pteredactyl wrote: post #30

I don't understand the problem. The flipside would be they're letting Job Advertisers only target women. I wonder what those numbers look like: What percentage of job advertisers only target women? If I'm spending ad dollars, why would I not choose the most effective form of advertising for me? That's not to say they're not hiring women. In which case it'd be more dubious. Last week in the Bay Area I heard a TSA radi…

It's interesting to think about. If I'm looking for someone to ride on a garbage truck, there's probably a 95% chance the future employee will be male, but acting on this expectation, by advertising to men instead of women - getting more employees per dollar spent, is sexist. Likewise, if I needed to hire an au pair I'd have to advertise to men and women equally?

I think it’s sexists, but I also think that targeted advertising should be allowed as long as Uber hires women drivers who want to drive for Uber.

I think there will certainly be some issues if it becomes a trend though. I mean, most programmers are men, most doctors are women and if you target your adds based on that, you’ll only further increase the current norms.

Frankly targeting sex makes little sense for most jobs, doesn’t it? It’s be more reasonable to target interests, qualifications, education and current job status. I mean, Facebook knows what job and car you have, it might even know how much you drive, wouldn’t it make sense for Uber to target that instead of sex? But maybe they combine it all.