Many Job Ads on Facebook Illegally Exclude Women, ACLU Says (nbcnews.com)

Facebook's advertising platform is being used by prospective employers to discriminate against women, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday. From a report: The American Civil Liberties Union, joined by a labor union and a law firm that specializes in representing employees, has filed a written charge against Facebook with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the federal agency that enforces anti-discrimination laws in the workplace. The charge asks for an investigation of the social media company and an injunction against what it calls discriminatory practices at a company with a sizable influence over the U.S. labor market. It also claims Facebook's system violates anti-discrimination provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The social network has faced sustained criticism for years that it fails to stop discriminatory ads of various kinds, from housing ads that exclude certain races to job ads targeted only at younger workers. In August, Facebook said it would remove 5,000 targeted advertising options from its platform in an effort to prevent discrimination.

Comments

Everything is "discriminatory"

[butchersong]

This seems pretty nonsensical to me. The entire point of advertising is to reach those groups most likely to respond to your product. Life without discrimination isn't even really life.. you can't even acknowledge a difference between right and wrong, good or evil. It's like we're trying to unmake ourselves.

Re:Everything is "discriminatory"

[pjw2072]

That's true, but the EEOC's definition of discrimination pertains to certain protected classes. Is that just? I think this is where the discussion should begin.

Re:Everything is "discriminatory"

[SirSlud]

Job wanted ads are not the same as advertising for consumer products and services. A job is not a product - they are two different things treated in very different ways by the legal system.

Re:Everything is "discriminatory"

[jedidiah]

Job ads and housing ads are treated exactly the same. That's why this issue has come up in the past on that very subject (housing).

Civil Rights laws have rather loose "result based" standards that probably seem counter-intutitive to a lot of civil libertines.

You can't even avoid advertising to people. What constitutes that sort of thing isn't intuitive to a layman.

Even excluding convicted criminals can be a problem.

Re:Everything is "discriminatory"

[SirSlud]

I can't believe some people are really going to defend something like a job posting site offering the ability to employers to say "I only want men to know about this job." That's not a complicated case for discrimination. Newspapers and job posting websites like monster didn't offer protected class attribute targeting and employers didn't find this so economically burdensome as to not to advertise in them so it's pretty stupid to charge that this is something that employers need to be able to do as the cost of making the job market significantly less transparent for everybody.

Re:Everything is "discriminatory"

[butchersong]

It seems fairly just on its face but say I have a product that is an oil for people with African phenotype hair. It would be crazy for me to be sued for targeting African Americans. What if I wanted sales people for my product? Shouldn't I be able to publish an ad that targets African Americans that will actually be able to successfully market it for me? A white chick with straight blonde hair probably isn't going to be my best salesperson.

Re:Everything is "discriminatory"

[rickb928]

"The entire point of advertising is to reach those groups most likely to respond to your product."

Employment ads often are intended to reach those candidates most qualified, primarily, and secondarily most likely to respond.

Qualification cannot be, legally, determined by race, color, creed, national origin, sex, age, and a few other categories I've forgotten.

So you cannot legally restrict advertising based on these and other criteria. In fact, even location is a challenging criteria, as zip code or specific region might be discriminatory. So if you're hiring in Redmond, for instance, advertising in just a few zip codes in SF might be a violation, while just spewing it to all of SF Bay Area would probably not be.

Re:Everything is "discriminatory"

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems pretty nonsensical to me. The entire point of advertising is to reach those groups most likely to respond to your product. Life without discrimination isn't even really life.. you can't even acknowledge a difference between right and wrong, good or evil. It's like we're trying to unmake ourselves.

That is what happens when you allow the Legal Industrial Complex to convince every American that they're offended by every fucking thing, or should be.

And of course they should sue someone because of it.

This is exactly how we ended up here in the Land of the Perpetually Offended. The irony? We fight every day to retain Freedom of Speech, and yet we're working very quickly at the same time to utterly destroy it with this addiction to political correctness.

Re:Everything is "discriminatory"

[butchersong]

Legally in the US this is the case but more and more these well intentioned laws, even the civil rights act seem like they're these awkward heuristics that disagree fundamentally with the way the world works to such an extent that when enforced they have the opposite of intended effect. They erode communities and damage relations between people. It seems crazy to question them at first but when you begin thinking about them carefully, more and more it is the laws that begin to seem crazy.

Re:Everything is "discriminatory"

[sunking2]

You seem to be comparing this to advertisers who specific target ads in say ebony, or on BET. However it's not quite the same thing.

I think the housing example is the clearest example of where this is obviously wrong. There are strong laws against discrimination in housing and specifically not showing your ad to a segment of the population is clearly discriminatory.

Targeting is fine, exclusion isn't.

Re:Everything is "discriminatory"

[laie_techie]

It seems fairly just on its face but say I have a product that is an oil for people with African phenotype hair. It would be crazy for me to be sued for targeting African Americans. What if I wanted sales people for my product? Shouldn't I be able to publish an ad that targets African Americans that will actually be able to successfully market it for me? A white chick with straight blonde hair probably isn't going to be my best salesperson.

I believe that certain allowances are made. It's ok to discriminate if that particular characteristic is paramount to the job. As an example, I grew up in Hawaii. The Polynesian Cultural Center can discriminate based on perceived race for performers (people don't fly thousands of miles and spend lots of money to see white blondes doing the Samoan slap dance, for example), but race cannot be a factor in hiring tour guides (but spoken languages can). I said perceived race because my sister (natural blonde) dyed her hair and danced the Tahitian hula for years.

Re:Everything is "discriminatory"

[drinkypoo]

Job ads and housing ads are treated exactly the same. That's why this issue has come up in the past on that very subject (housing).

Yes, they're treated the same, which is to say that Facebook intentionally created a tool that enables discrimination. There shouldn't even be discriminatory options presented when you create an advertisement for a job or a rental, but that's how Facebook authored the tool.

Re:Everything is "discriminatory"

[ShanghaiBill]

Hooters hires only female waitstaff, and requires them to be "slim and fit". They were sued, and won, since the appearance of their waitresses is critical to their business model. So the law makes reasonable exceptions.

Re:Everything is "discriminatory"

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe some people are really going to defend something like a job posting site offering the ability to employers to say "I only want men to know about this job."

Some people believe in freedom, including the freedom to choose how you target advertising that you are paying for. Other people believe it is a valid and reasonable function of the police power of the state to force people to spend their money against their wishes. Therein lies the dichotomy. Freedom or not freedom. Anti-freedom advocates know their position is morally inferior, which is why they expend a tremendous amount of energy exercising the mental gymnastics required to define "freedom" as requiring people to behave a certain way under penalty of imprisonment.

Re:Everything is "discriminatory"

[Areyoukiddingme]

Let me try: it is fundamentally wrong that the number of women in computing has plummeted even as the number of women in other major technical professions–including law, accounting, medicine, and scientific research–has approached parity.

Says who? Women have been given the choice, and as it turns out, the more choices they have, the more likely they are to choose professions that align best with their life priorities, and computing doesn't. It is not your privilege to say what all women should want. Even if you are a woman, it's still not. You can only say what you want, not every other woman. The aggregate of all of those empowered, independent women making informed, free decisions is to freely choose—not computing. You have no right to claim their choices are wrong.

Women are excluded from programming not because they can't do the job–they're excluded because the community is comfortable prioritizing our abusive, "brutally honest" Mamet-esque dick-swinging over professionalism.

Assumes facts not in evidence, as well as mischaracterizes the facts already in evidence. Stating "this code is wrong" is not dick-swinging, and is, in fact, a required part of the profession. To outsiders who don't have deadlines, that looks brutally honest, but I have news for you: the machine doesn't care. Because the machine doesn't care, precision of communication is important, and any sentence that begins, "I feel..." has no place at all when discussing the quality of code, the robustness of an operating environment, or the security of user's data. Your job is to make 19.2 billion transistors do the correct thing. They do not care how you feel.

Re:Everything is "discriminatory"

[Cederic]

You're setting out a false dichotomy there. The freedom loving sexist can choose to not spend their money on advertising.

The state merely mandates that if they do spend their money on advertising, they need to obey the social contract inherent to operating within that jurisdiction.

That's not forcing them to spend any money at all. It's not denying them freedom either. You're just being silly.

Re:Everything is "discriminatory"

[epyT-R]

You mean like the mental gymnastics feminists use to excuse companies entirely run by women? How about colleges asking for white students to stay home for a day?

Of course, like you say, I will not get a straight answer from you on this because you are no different than the ones you target.

Strawman

[rsilvergun]

you're equating discriminating between chocolate and vanilla ice cream lovers to gender discrimination. The world is just a tad more nuanced than that.

If I can risk strawmaning myself for a bit here, I think the problem is we've been too far removed from the worst of discrimination for too long. We forget too easily that women didn't used to vote, could be beaten and even raped with impunity, couldn't own property or were themselves property. What's crazy is there's large swaths of the world where all this is still true and we turn a blind eye to it. There's also a sizable minority of regressives who want to turn back the clock. Some (Jordon Peterson comes to mind) have pretty large followings and speak in pretty reasonable terms...

Re:Strawman

[Scroatzilla]

>> Jordon Peterson comes to mind

So what you're saying is that you have seen hit pieces on Jordan Peterson, have no idea what he says, and are now using him in your vague argument advocating for social justice while completely ignoring the agency of women to make their own life choices.

Re:Strawman

[avandesande]

Burden of proof lays on the OP, not to mention you can't prove a negative.

Re:Strawman

[Areyoukiddingme]

We forget too easily that women didn't used to vote, could be beaten and even raped with impunity, couldn't own property or were themselves property. What's crazy is there's large swaths of the world where all this is still true and we turn a blind eye to it.

Right. Those places definitely need some Freedom! brought to them. Nothing says Freedom! like tanks in the streets.

It isn't "our" job to radically alter other people's cultures, especially because the only ways we know to do that which actually worked historically are brutally and indiscriminately violent. Those cultures will change from within, or not at all. Unless and until they acquire their own Susan B. Anthony's, there own Elizabeth Stanton's, there's nothing "we" can do. And there is no "we" here, either. You are the only one wringing your hands about the problems of people you've never met, who do, in fact, make their own decisions about their own lives, and don't need your busybody advice telling them how to live them.

Re:The word "discrimination" means "choice"

[anegg]

How is it right for an unelected minority to decide who everybody else must live with?

These laws were not put in place by an unelected minority. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Rights_Act_of_1964 was a bill that passed Congress and was signed into law by the then-President of the United States Lyndon B. Johnson. The Civil Rights Act made it illegal within the United States to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. According to Wikipedia, it It prohibits unequal application of voter registration requirements, racial segregation in schools, employment, and public accommodations. Additional laws including (but not limited to) the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 followed... check out https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/index.cfm to see all of the laws enforced by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Duly elected representatives of the people of the United States have determined that these kinds of discrimination will not be tolerated.

Re:Definitely Wrong

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

So...companies should not hire women because men might try too hard to nail them?

Just Curious

[Jfetjunky]

From TFA " The employers include companies involved in moving services, roofing, auto repair, window replacement, retail and home security installation. If not for Facebook’s precise ad targeting, the charge against Facebook says, women “would have clicked on those employment ads in order to learn more about those opportunities and pursue them."

Is that really the case, or is a hypothetical to show intent? Because if it is true, those are usually jobs squarely in the argument of "you don't hear about women arguing to get THESE jobs", and would be pretty interesting to hear direct evidence to the contrary.

Re:Don't you love it, when

[GameboyRMH]

Liberals happily "eat their own" because they have these things called morals and principles, rather than just simple party tribalism.

Re:#metoo Blowback.

[AmiMoJo]

This claim that mere accusations of being looked at "wrong" are enough for sexual harassment complaints is bogus. There needs to be a documented pattern of behaviour or a single well documented overt incident like groping in public.

Complaining about looks with no evidence will just get you on HR's shit list and passed over for promotion.

Problems will occur

[JimSadler]

As an example those that rent out a room in their homes are not bound by the anti discrimination laws. I choose to live with women and not males or a person of my own race or religion that does not violate any laws at all. Now just what can Facebook do? A room for rent posting can be for my own home or a home that I don't even live in. So now will I be discriminated against and not allowed to choose who is in my home?