Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

propublica.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 407 posts

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#61

Post by twblalock »

Meph504 wrote: post #37
jonny_eh wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook should make it much harder to use their product illegally. They can hide protected demographic filters when ads are of a protected nature, like jobs or housing.

This concept of law enforcement is a really slippery slope, trying to force companies to stop people from breaking the law, is a serious shift in the concept of freedom. prohibit acts are allowed, and they are dealt with by punishing the wrong doers. Turning a company's automated system into a judge of legal and illegal action just seems like a bad idea in the long run. Though, it is seemingly a growing trend, I don'…

Facebook is not being asked to enforce the law. It is being asked to stop doing illegal things.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#62

Post by kakarot »

This is a situation where you must ask yourself the very difficult question of what is more important, individual freedom or equality?

I think it goes beyond egalitarianism, because I certainly think any female who wants to become a highly-paid programmer should be able to do so simply by building merit, without any additional barriers.

I also think that any person, male or female, has the right to decide what demographics their private company is composed of.

The extreme of this, a world where all high-paying jobs are dished out by misogynists, is definitely a problem that needs to be solved, but I don't think we are actually living in that world currently.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#63

Post by calimac »

Facebook is not the policemen of the internet.

Is it ok for your Tesla to have ludicrous mode?

Believe me I have serious issues with zuckbook but their ads platform filtering selects is not an issue.

You cannot assume that targeting men automatically means that they are discriminating against women.

#FlawedLogic

There are circumstances where I would optimize 1 ad for a man and another for a woman to get get better conversion than a general ad but still advertise equally to both genders.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#64

Post by eappleby »

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.

What about recruiting from all-female schools like Barnard?

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#65

Post by mankash666 »

We need to stop treating Facebook or any digital infrastructure as culpable when it's users are the ones responsible.

As far as Facebook's concerned, it's an advertiser picking a demographic. I bet they don't know what the ad is about!

What next? Hold AT&T culpable for providing internet to these advertisers?

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#66

Post by golemotron »

twblalock wrote: post #58
patcheudor wrote: post #5

Blaming Facebook muddies the water a bit. Ultimately the companies advertising on Facebook broke the law when they checked the wrong boxes. Facebook should; however, make that information public knowledge by allowing the public to see the advertising parameters of any given ad if they are curious but to my knowledge, no law requires it. Maybe it's time to start having a conversation about the need advertising transpa…

Facebook publishes the ads. If someone asks Facebook to publish an illegal ad (or to do anything else that's illegal), Facebook should refuse. If you do something illegal because your users asked you to, it's still illegal. The article is pretty clear that publishing the ads is illegal.

Facebook is a publisher? I thought it still operated user content under the DMCA safe harbors.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#69

Post by mreome »

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…

The issue is that under the law, you as an employer are not allowed to make a hiring related choice that in any way discriminates against a protected class (with some exceptions discussed on other comments). You might expect to only get applications from men, but legally you can not target men specifically.

The inclusion of 'women and people of color strongly encouraged to apply' is actually walking a fine legal line when you go by the word of the law, and is only accepted as it is encouraging what are more-often the discriminated-against groups within the protected classes. It follows the sprite of the law, which is to protect the discriminated-against groups within the protected classes.

Re: Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

#70

Post by twblalock »

golemotron wrote: post #66
twblalock wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook publishes the ads. If someone asks Facebook to publish an illegal ad (or to do anything else that's illegal), Facebook should refuse. If you do something illegal because your users asked you to, it's still illegal. The article is pretty clear that publishing the ads is illegal.

Facebook is a publisher? I thought it still operated user content under the DMCA safe harbors.

The safe harbor protects sites whose users infringe copyright, if certain conditions are met. I don't think it applies to advertising.

An example of safe harbor protection would be something like a user uploading a copyrighted song without a site's knowledge. If the site did not know about it, did not benefit from it financially, and takes it down when they are told about it, safe harbor protections would probably apply.

In contrast, Facebook knows the content and targeting options of every ad that they publish, and makes money from the ads.

Post reply on HN