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More Firms Used Facebook To Block Older Job Seekers, Lawsuit Alleges (chicagotribune.com)
A proposed class-action lawsuit alleging Facebook's ad placement tools facilitate discrimination against older job-seekers has been expanded to identify additional companies. "When Facebook's own algorithm disproportionately directs ads to younger workers at the exclusion of older workers, Facebook and the advertisers who are using Facebook as an agent to send their advertisements are engaging in disparate treatment," a communications union alleged in the amended complaint, citing a legal test for employment discrimination, filed Tuesday in San Francisco federal court. The union added claims under California's fair employment and unfair competition statutes to the lawsuit, which was initially filed in December. Chicago Tribune reports: The Communications Workers of America is suing on behalf of union members and other job seekers who allegedly missed out on employment opportunities because companies used Facebook's ad tools to target people of other ages. The original filing named defendants are Amazon.com Inc., Cox Media Group, Cox Communications Inc. and T-Mobile, as well as what the union estimates to be hundreds of employers and employment agencies who used Facebook's tools to filter out older job hunters when seeking to fill positions. The amended filing adds Ikea, Enterprise Rent-A-Car and the University of Maryland Medical System to its list of companies who allegedly used Facebook's tools to filter by age. Those three entities, as well as Facebook, aren't named defendants in the lawsuit.
The union alleged in its amended lawsuit that Facebook also uses age-filtering in ads intended to find its own new employees. In January, the union filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint about the alleged practice, according to a copy obtained by Bloomberg News. The CWA says it has filed similar claims against dozens of companies, and that the agency has asked those employers, and Facebook, to respond to the allegations. An EEOC spokeswoman declined to confirm or deny the existence of any complaints.
The union alleged in its amended lawsuit that Facebook also uses age-filtering in ads intended to find its own new employees. In January, the union filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint about the alleged practice, according to a copy obtained by Bloomberg News. The CWA says it has filed similar claims against dozens of companies, and that the agency has asked those employers, and Facebook, to respond to the allegations. An EEOC spokeswoman declined to confirm or deny the existence of any complaints.
Not presenting an ad to someone does not block them from applying to a job.
Kind of hard to apply for a job you don't know exists.....
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Tech companies have been finding ways to discriminate against older workers for years. It is no surprise that they now use Facebook to that end. Facebook, with its targeted ad infrastructure, makes it more subtle and easier for the companies to continue to discriminate.
Except being old is a legally protected class, just like being Black or female. Filter against Californians or beekeepers or people who drive red cars all you want. If you filter based on a protected class you have legal liability.
But does one have the right to be informed of the existence of all open job positions?
If I wanted to hire for my business and just asked around my friends for recommendations/referrals without doing a "public" job offering, have I violated either the law or your sense of ethics?
For a big company, I would imagine that posting it at company.com/careers constitutes a fair public announcement for anyone that wishes to inquire.
At a job interview with Amazon they asked how many years experience did I have with Unix. When I replied over 25 years, one of them said how did you get 25 years and I said well I am 52, and I worked for Sun Micro. The lead said, "I wish you hadn't said that, now I can't hire you, too old". And it ended.
If I wanted to hire for my business and just asked around my friends for recommendations/referrals without doing a "public" job offering, have I violated either the law or your sense of ethics?
Depends. When you ask your friends for recommendations do you say "no one that can remember the 70s?" If so, then quite possibly yes, you have violated the law. If these companies are focusing on one class of people over another based on a criteria that is not inherently necessary to the job function then they are definitely breaking the spirit of the law, if not necessarily the letter.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Let's substitute "older" with "black" or "Jewish" and see if it changes your feelings on the matter. I find that's a useful way to gauge something like this.
Personally, I think that companies that limit their potential pool of applicants and talent for any reason are just shooting themselves in the foot, unless you want to argue that older applicants are less qualified. In some cases they may not have exposure to the latest languages, frameworks, etc. but 20 years of experience is worth a lot in its own way.
The other part of me thinks that these companies want young employees fresh out of college that they can work like a dog for a few years before casting them off. Older employees aren't anywhere near as willing to put up with that shit and likely have life commitments outside of work that don't afford them the opportunity to slog through 60 work weeks.
As a stupid question...
When you buy an ad in Teen Vogue, Reddit, AARP, Ebony, or Cosmo, you are buying an ad that is served to every reader of those magazines. The advertiser, the publisher, and the reader take the magazines demographics as it is.
When you buy an ad on Facebook, you down-select from Facebook's demographics based upon categories that are both ordinary and potentially problematic.
And that ca be a no-no. Because failing to serve an ad based on a discriminatory down-selection can be a violation of civil rights laws.
In other words, whether or not your action is a crime depends on your thoughts during the act.
Which makes it a thought-crime
No, it does not. The thought of discrimination against an older person is the motivation behind your act, but it is the act itself that is illegal. Let's take your logic: I break into a house to steal something. The owner is home and I end up killing them. I didn't plan to kill them, therefore I am not guilty of murder because it wasn't my thought to kill them.
Thought crime is when you can be arrested simply for having a thought or an idea. Once you have moved beyond thought into action, you are no longer in thought crime territory but actual crime territory. And this happens regularly during criminal proceedings, for example when to attach hate crime charges. A white guy beats up a black guy, and it's assault. The white guy says white supremacist/derogatory things while beating up the black guy? That speaks to his motivations for the crime and lends evidence towards a hate crime.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
but there is no more place in the modern workforce for the over-30. Let's not delude them into thinking otherwise.
So retirement at 30? Fucking shit hot. All these under 30 must be making so much to provide for everyone over 30 who is no longer able to work. Or should everyone have made enough by 30 to fund an additional 60 years of life? Tricky, but doable if you get everything handed down to you by generations that weren't full of shit though and you don't care about the next generation.
Wanna buy a shirt?
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they do not want experience, they want people new enough to agree to work for peanuts. Experience is expensive and the (very) expensive CEOs childishly still believe they can get away with dirt cheap (young and unskilled developers). And if all goes wrong they (the CEOs) already have a golden parachute on their contract.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
My theory is that organic economic growth in the capitalist West has somehow stalled, and corporations looking for increasing profits are increasingly relying on cost cutting to boost profits.
Eliminating older workers in favor of cheaper and more disposable young people and immigrants is a way to obtain cost reductions.
It also helps to gut the middle class so that you produce an ever larger population of more economically disenfranchised young people who are willing to take low-paying jobs.
Based on this example, if I am looking to hire and using Facebook, then it falls on me to select the appropriate demographics. It isn't Facebooks fault I picked 18-35, so the blame would fall squarely on me.
Sounds like the blame goes to those listing the jobs, though Facebook might have some work to do regarding clarifying what categories on their platform really mean.
> Firms already target their ads, where do you propose we draw the line?
Targeting ads isn't necessarily the same as excluding others from viewing them. Your job posting may be viewed by anyone who reads Elle, even if they aren't part of Elle's target demo. Your job posting on Facebook will not be shown to anyone 35+ if you specifically request it only go to 18-34. There is no "flipping through a copy in the waiting room at the dentist's office" equivalent on Facebook. That's where the line is.
Kind of hard to apply for a job you don't know exists.....
Why would Facebook be your goto job-hunting source? It is close to my last choice, right above maybe the help-wanted ads in the old fashioned physical newspaper thing.
You are looking at this wrong. In this case Facebook isn't a job-hunting source, it is an employee recruitment source. Companies are paying for ads advertising their open positions, and the allegation is that these companies are using Facebook's ad-targeting data to only serve ads to people who are younger and presumably cheaper. It will be interesting to see how the court interprets the anti-discrimination laws in this case, especially if they are able to show in court precisely what criteria was used to determine who to serve the ad to.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil