Facebook Allegedly Allowed Employers to Block Women from Seeing Job Ads

cageymaru

cageymaru

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The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has accused Facebook of assisting employers in targeting job advertising to only certain classes of people. In this case, women were allegedly completely excluded from being able to see job ads from employers that intentionally chose to block women by using tools crafted by Facebook. The complaint was filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) by an ACLU labor union. Lawyers say this is in violation of the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which made discrimination based on the sex of the applicant illegal. This lawsuit is eerily similar to the HUD complaint against Facebook when it allegedly allowed home owners to discriminate against certain classes of people by using Facebook tools to block viewing of housing ads based on the recipient's race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, disability, and/or zip code.

"The discrimination is always lurking below the surface," Romer-Friedman said. "Here we have evidence that employers never really abandoned the practice but because of their own stupidity and Facebook's transparency in the job ads, we know now this is a systemic problem." Facebook also excluded women from its own company, the complaint charged. It said Facebook uses its "Lookalike Feature," which searches for demographic similarities in customer bases, "in its own recruiting for positions at Facebook" which results in "discrimination against women in Facebook's own recruiting and hiring."
 
Except this isnt discrimination based on the sex of an applicant. You aren't an applicant until you have applied for it. Seeing the ad does not make you an applicant. This is called targeted advertising. So if an employer cant target a demographic for advertising then I say neither can a company that wants to sell me something...
 
It sounds more like an algorithmic issue with facebook's coding, too much "OMG they are doing it on purpose!" more than realizing they aren't fully testing the stuff out before pushing it to the site.
I know they do have a history of purposely blocking things, but reading that article it sounded like some of the companies didn't even know it was happening.
 
SomeoneElse said:
It sounds more like an algorithmic issue with facebook's coding, too much "OMG they are doing it on purpose!" more than realizing they aren't fully testing the stuff out before pushing it to the site.
I know they do have a history of purposely blocking things, but reading that article it sounded like some of the companies didn't even know it was happening.
Click to expand...

This is point 3 and 4 from the ACLU link that I posted.

Facebook requires each of its users to identify their gender when opening an account. In turn, through its advertising platform, Facebook enables, encourages, and assists employers to target advertisements and recruitment based on the user’s gender, by allowing advertisers to select either “All,” “Male,” or “Female”users to receive the ad.

Once the employer limits its target audience for a job advertisement based on the gender of the users it wants to reach, Facebook then effectuates the employer’s gender-based targeting preferences by delivering the ads only to users who identify as the selected gender, using the gender assigned to or selected by the user to target ads on the basis of sex, while excluding all other users from receiving the ad. Thus, if an advertiser selects “Male,” the advertisement will not be shown to Facebook users who publicly identify as “Female” or a “custom” gender that publicly identifies their gender pronoun as “Neutral.”
 
Not to side with Facebook, but they created an ad toolset that let's you get very granular in your target demographic regardless of what you're advertising. That's how ads are done to maximum your return on marketing dollars.

If someone is advertising in violation of regulations, that someone is at fault.
 
I wonder how many "like" funnels it takes to game it down to like 3% female? Call of Duty + Dodge Ram + A Handgun Brand?
 
cageymaru said:
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has accused Facebook of assisting employers in targeting job advertising to only certain classes of people. In this case, women were allegedly completely excluded from being able to see job ads from employers that intentionally chose to block women by using tools crafted by Facebook. The complaint was filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) by an ACLU labor union. Lawyers say this is in violation of the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which made discrimination based on the sex of the applicant illegal. This lawsuit is eerily similar to the HUD complaint against Facebook when it allegedly allowed home owners to discriminate against certain classes of people by using Facebook tools to block viewing of housing ads based on the recipient's race, color, religion, sex, familial status, national origin, disability, and/or zip code.

"The discrimination is always lurking below the surface," Romer-Friedman said. "Here we have evidence that employers never really abandoned the practice but because of their own stupidity and Facebook's transparency in the job ads, we know now this is a systemic problem." Facebook also excluded women from its own company, the complaint charged. It said Facebook uses its "Lookalike Feature," which searches for demographic similarities in customer bases, "in its own recruiting for positions at Facebook" which results in "discrimination against women in Facebook's own recruiting and hiring."
Click to expand...

Facebook and offending companies will get the slap down.

But part of the problem I believe is Facebook charges based on the number of people that see the ad. If a certain demographic is likely to apply (ie waste management will almost be all men) then advertising to women would be wasted dollars. That said Facebook needs to clean up it's practices big time
 
Spidey329 said:
Not to side with Facebook, but they created an ad toolset that let's you get very granular in your target demographic regardless of what you're advertising. That's how ads are done to maximum your return on marketing dollars.

If someone is advertising in violation of regulations, that someone is at fault.
Click to expand...

Not blaming Facebook bugs me as well but if we don't blame Colt for some idiot misusing an AR or some other idiot driving a Dodge Ram 4x4 PU into a crowd just because, then we can't blame Facebook because some idiot employer is only targeting white male under 30 for some management position advertisement.

IMO, the ACLU should get a court order forcing Facebook to turn over a list of all customers who have sent out job advertisements with parameters that would seem to violate one or more of the various Civil Rights laws or rules. After verifying that the customers did in fact send out said advertising, post the list on a public site and let the SJW crowd take over. After waiting 6 months, the ACLU could file suit against the survivors.
 
This seems a little too SJW to me. Advertise to the groups that will get you the greatest return for what you pay. Advertise your mechanics jobs to men and elementary school jobs to women. Why spend extra on such a small return? It's not like those people were being rejected after they applied. And Facebook isn't the only way to advertise that you have jobs available..
 
I want to know exactly what employment ads that these applied to.

Not like you are going to hire a female as a male model.. or maybe they would.

You are also not going to be hiring a female as a player for male sports.

It is called targeted advertising.

You want people to see your ad who are going to be the most likely respond to it because the advertiser ends up paying for each view, not just responses.
 
cyclone3d said:
I want to know exactly what employment ads that these applied to.

Not like you are going to hire a female as a male model.. or maybe they would.

You are also not going to be hiring a female as a player for male sports.

It is called targeted advertising.

You want people to see your ad who are going to be the most likely respond to it because the advertiser ends up paying for each view, not just responses.
Click to expand...
OTR truck driver, police officer, window replacement firm, and software developer to name a few.
 
I think going after facebook in this case is BS; they provide targeted advertising, the same as every other ad agency out there. It's the agencies purchasing the advertising who are at fault in this case.
 
Knurrus said:
Except that some kinds of advertising is prohibited, and this one on the face on it seem to be discriminatory.

An analogy is that in a company only men are informed about new openings they can apply to, but female colleagues are left in the dark, thus they can not apply. That seems pretty discriminatory to me.
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Show me the law that says you cant target demographics in advertising it certainly isnt codified in their referenced law.. I didnt say it wasnt discriminatory, I said it was target advertising not discrimination in hiring. You arent an applicant until you apply.

Now if they claimed that women learned about the position anyway and applied and were denied on the basis that they were women then yeah theres a case there. But thats not what happened. They picked a target demographic to advertise to, they didnt say "no women".
 
Aireoth said:
You would be better off taking a more moderate position, rather than jumping the shark straight off a cliff.
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I’m not taking a position, I’m giving an example of unregulated process going awry. There’s advantages and disadvantages, no shark jumped.
 
Nolan7689 said:
I’m not taking a position, I’m giving an example of unregulated process going awry. There’s advantages and disadvantages, no shark jumped.
Click to expand...

Your example is too extreme, further regulation or lack of it will have little impact on nepotism. If you take a second to think of how nepotism fuctions you'd realize that.
 
I knew this would come up as soon as I advertised a role on Facebook jobs. It's basically the ad targetting logic so ripe for abuse.

Same as i can create an advert to 16 year old girls to come and play with puppies.

I do not do that.
 
SomeoneElse said:
It sounds more like an algorithmic issue with facebook's coding, too much "OMG they are doing it on purpose!" more than realizing they aren't fully testing the stuff out before pushing it to the site.
I know they do have a history of purposely blocking things, but reading that article it sounded like some of the companies didn't even know it was happening.
Click to expand...

It's also an issue of what is typical vs what we would like to happen. There are a ton of jobs that men just happen to be far more interested in. The algorithm probably picks up on this and funnels job adds towards the kind of jobs that fit your demographic. A lot of people wish everything was 50/50, but that just isn't going to happen, and in a free society, why should we force that upon people.
 
Knurrus said:
I am not surprised that a software company only want to hire male developers.

As a software developer I have and had male software developer colleagues that insists that women can not be good programmers. After picking apart their arguments it usually ends with a variation of "because they are women" as a final point. Not very convincing.
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This is sort of like the "woke twitter" posts people make about their 5 year old schooling a trump supporter. I'm calling bullshit on this.
 
I assume this goes both ways, right?

So why is this phrased like this?
 
gusphase said:
This is sort of like the "woke twitter" posts people make about their 5 year old schooling a trump supporter. I'm calling bullshit on this.
Click to expand...
I'm calling bullshit on the entire account of knurrus, registered recently, and wherever I go it is engaged only in sjw talking points. And consistently ignores any arguments not easily dismissed.

I suspect an activist behind it and not someone interested in dialogue.
 
I own a small company with all highly educated white males. What are you gonna do about it? Right, nothing. Cause it's my company. Fuck the American Criminal Liberties Union.
 
M76 said:
I'm calling bullshit on the entire account of knurrus, registered recently, and wherever I go it is engaged only in sjw talking points. And consistently ignores any arguments not easily dismissed.

I suspect an activist behind it and not someone interested in dialogue.
Click to expand...
I noticed that as well, I was wondering because its was created so recent and really have only noticed the account being used when these topics come up.
 
Rob94hawk said:
I own a small company with all highly educated white males. What are you gonna do about it? Right, nothing. Cause it's my company. Fuck the American Criminal Liberties Union.
Click to expand...
I bet you dont even need an HR department.

Why the hell would you?

Do your job or go home.
 
gusphase said:
It's also an issue of what is typical vs what we would like to happen. There are a ton of jobs that men just happen to be far more interested in. The algorithm probably picks up on this and funnels job adds towards the kind of jobs that fit your demographic. A lot of people wish everything was 50/50, but that just isn't going to happen, and in a free society, why should we force that upon people.
Click to expand...

Equal opportunities vs equal outcomes. The cultural-Marxists that believe in a post-merit world want the latter. Oddly enough, it's only for the cushy jobs. The targeted advertising slant is a fine line to dance on in Facebook's case; had the employers' advertised in Penthouse, there is still a possibility of it being seen by a women (as they aren't prohibited from purchasing it) so there's no overt discrimination. A switch that literally prevents the ad from displaying on a webpage, though, most probably is.
 
Rob94hawk said:
I own a small company with all highly educated white males. What are you gonna do about it? Right, nothing. Cause it's my company. Fuck the American Criminal Liberties Union.
Click to expand...

Eh. I have a friend that was counsel for the ACLU for a while. Some stuff they do is unreasonable - and that tends to be the stuff that gets press. I'd say, on balance, the majority of it is pretty much ok, or even if one disagrees with it, it's not a batshit position they are taking. At least a few years ago that was the case.
 
SomeoneElse said:
I noticed that as well, I was wondering because its was created so recent and really have only noticed the account being used when these topics come up.
Click to expand...

Simple logged IP trace which Kyle has will be able to tie it to other accounts here. So if someone is intentionally being an arse hat troll, they won't be around much longer.
 
Knurrus said:
I am not surprised that a software company only want to hire male developers.

As a software developer I have and had male software developer colleagues that insists that women can not be good programmers. After picking apart their arguments it usually ends with a variation of "because they are women" as a final point. Not very convincing.
Click to expand...
I prefer not to work with women because they bring drama into the team dynamic and productivity goes down for everyone.
 
Armenius said:
I prefer not to work with women because they bring drama into the team dynamic and productivity goes down for everyone.
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That's ridiculous. Drama is brought just as easily by men. I utterly despise workplace drama and I've run across my fair share from both men and women. I see zero difference in their ability to cause bullshit that makes the work day harder.
 
Knurrus said:
Quite clearly you are right to suspect that I'm up to something nefarious, especially as I talk back and you do not like my posts. I'm a Scandinavian living in Sweden (a country located in Europe), highly educated and an atheist. So by now the warning klaxons should be pretty loud and suitably enhanced by a tin-foil hat.

The people that so liberally call other people snowflakes, SJW, thin-skinned, cultural-marxist, etc, are remarkable thin-skinned themselves, I would say rather snowflaky.

As for dialogue, ah well, in recent threads there where several in good-faith attempts by me and others.

I do have some sympathy with the following quote from the eminent economist Robert Solow : https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Solow
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My exact problem is you don't talk back, when faced with facts or arguments. Just repeat talking points ad-nausea and then move on when you get bored, without directly addressing any of the points. Your posts can be summed up as either false assertions conceived from thin air, talking points, or as moral grandstanding. Or any combination of these. Oh and I forgot the poisoning of the well. Like you do now: calling someone thin-skinned is not an argument. OK, what if I'm thin skinned who gives a crap? That doesn't mean I'm wrong. And I'm actually snowflaky because I have a serious skin condition called atopic dermatitis. So you're actually attacking me for my disability. So much for your moral superiority. What you say you didn't know? You presume to know that women and minorities are always victims. As you presume to know that I'm from the US. I know exactly what Scandinavia is. Since I'm from Europe too, and I consider myself a fairly well traveled person. I'm just putting that out there so you don't try selling some bullshit, because you might talk about places I actually been too, or even lived at.

So how about addressing the point I made just above the post you're reacting to for a start? You are proving me right by only replying to this post and not the one actually addressing the topic at hand.
 
gunbust3r said:
I wonder how many "like" funnels it takes to game it down to like 3% female? Call of Duty + Dodge Ram + A Handgun Brand?
Click to expand...

Magic the Gathering + DOTA 2 + Micro Center + mechanical keyboards or anyone with one or more posts including Kailh/Gateron = 0.01%
 
singe_101 said:
Magic the Gathering + DOTA 2 + Micro Center + mechanical keyboards or anyone with one or more posts including Kailh/Gateron = 0.01%
Click to expand...

Reason and accountability => .0001%

/As Good As It Gets
/Bad Joke.
 
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Armenius said:
I prefer not to work with women because they bring drama into the team dynamic and productivity goes down for everyone.
Click to expand...

I have members on my team that bring in more drama than any woman I've worked with. It's always "I'm in a personal war with that department because they are working against me" attitude.
 
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