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Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

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71–80 of 487 posts

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#71
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The targeted ads in question relate to employment, which is governed by standards for what kinds of discrimination are legal and illegal.

Ok, so are you allowed to place employment ads in Cosmo? Is it Ok just because it’s overwhelming likely to be women who see it, versus algorithmically targeting women?

That is how it works legally, yes.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#72
post #65
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If you are, for example, placing rental or property ads that filter by race, age, or gender that is the official description of it.

and yet, by having a profile of the user, it is quite possible to "easily" find proxies for the above traits, and target those proxies instead, and thus dodge the legality issue. For example, using income.

Does that really dodge the legal issue?

I thought it had been shown that using proxies to discriminate is still illegal if the intention was to discriminate against a protected class.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#73
post #35

Nothing good can come from sticking my neck out on this, but: If I were paying for advertising for a software engineering position I'd get much better ROI by excluding women and older demographics simply because they're much less likely to be suitable for the job, statistically speaking, when we're talking about the wider population in general and not just software engineers. Not because they're less capable, but bec…

Your ROI calculation probably becomes different after you settle a massive EEOC lawsuit.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#74
post #65
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If you are, for example, placing rental or property ads that filter by race, age, or gender that is the official description of it.

and yet, by having a profile of the user, it is quite possible to "easily" find proxies for the above traits, and target those proxies instead, and thus dodge the legality issue. For example, using income.

No actually you can’t use such things legally. Discrimination is discrimination no matter how you bury it with indirection.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#75
post #35

Nothing good can come from sticking my neck out on this, but: If I were paying for advertising for a software engineering position I'd get much better ROI by excluding women and older demographics simply because they're much less likely to be suitable for the job, statistically speaking, when we're talking about the wider population in general and not just software engineers. Not because they're less capable, but bec…

My Aunt wrote computer code into her 60s. This was up until at most 10 years ago. She has a degree in math and went back to school after being a SAHM and got a degree in computer science from a community college, and banged out code for about 15 years. She coded circles around (and out-adulted) her younger colleagues.

Not sure why this is downvoted... but good for her.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#76
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The targeted ads in question relate to employment, which is governed by standards for what kinds of discrimination are legal and illegal.

Ok, so are you allowed to place employment ads in Cosmo? Is it Ok just because it’s overwhelming likely to be women who see it, versus algorithmically targeting women?

Can someone tell me, does Cosmopolitan magazine run job ads?

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#77
post #13
post #4

So does this mean that targeted ads are now considered discrimination?

Yes. If you are, for example, placing rental or property ads that filter by race, age, or gender that is the official description of it.

I wonder what would happen if someone found out that Facebook's algorithm was discriminating based on race, age, or gender for any of these categories that are illegal.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#78
post #65
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If you are, for example, placing rental or property ads that filter by race, age, or gender that is the official description of it.

and yet, by having a profile of the user, it is quite possible to "easily" find proxies for the above traits, and target those proxies instead, and thus dodge the legality issue. For example, using income.

redlining and similar practices are still usually illegal, although it is probably easier to cover up.

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#79

I have mixed feelings about this. I am absolutely aware this can be a means to intentionally exclude specific groups due to prejudice and can be a polite way to do terrible things. I get that. But the reality is that the modern world seems to seriously suck at figuring out how to help people find the right kind of job for themselves or help employers find the right people for the job. I keep thinking "Surely, there m…

This is a great idea. What about a service that allows proctored skills tests for applicants? Like Sitepoint but with some additional verification layers.

Hiring managers would then pick a tech stack or set of skills they need, and matches would bubble up based on applicants in the area with the relevant skills.

The "culture fit" question could be another egg to crack. Who knows if interviews are the best way to figure that out...

Re: Employers Used Facebook to Keep Women and Older Workers from Seeing Job Ads

#80
The dirty secret of hiring is that employers are always thinking about cost, but how many employees out there think of themselves as a cost to a bottom line? Not many.

The most exploitable tech workers are young, single, males on H1-b visas. They will take a low salary and essentially be enslaved to their job because getting fired means getting kicked out of the country.

Old workers and women are more “expensive” because they use more healthcare than young single males. We must totally disconnect employers from healthcare once and for all.

We must also reform the H1-b system and stop employers from having so much leverage over vulnerable employees due to their visa status.

Point is, it’s not as if employers think young men are superior talents to women or older workers, it’s that they are by far the cheapest and most exploitable. We need to remove these incentives (or disincentives) that distort the hiring process and allow these discriminatory behaviors to bubble up in the first place.

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