If I post my employment ad in Women's Health, Vogue, and Elle am I going to be sued for discrimination because these magazines are focused on women?
4
A perfect example of the many insidious ways our culture denies women equal opportunity. Would love to see Facebook pay a big fine!
5
Amazing.
Almost the same as when I was young in the 1960's. Newspaper - remember them? - job ads were categorized as "Jobs for Men," and "Jobs for Women."
All this technology and these companies can't get such a simple thing right?
1
On the surface this seems to be discriminatory. The easy fix would be to ban ads that target one group while excluding another. Then I ask myself, if I was looking for a job, why would I wait for an ad, from facebook of all places, to target me?
I would be all over the internet, working the phones, and pounding the pavement. Wait until I get a targeted ad from facebook? I don't think I would be interested in hiring someone like that.
3
So don’t allow Facebook or any other website to target job ads in a way that excludes a protected class. How is this a discussion? Oh, right... our Congress is incapable of passing any legislation beyond cutting taxes for the rich.
6
No regulation in powerful media 'attraction' manipulation may even underlie the motivation for these ads. With massive continual and constant pairing of competence, vitality, personality with men (especially younger) and neglecting with only sparse and often boring, ineffectual and even vile type women on TV. For women 45+ there are nearly no cool protagonist prominent personas. Instead of men then being supported in transcending biological bias, its greatly aggravated.
I Despise facebook, but I love to play words with friends and the only way i can is to keep my FB acct open, since you are required to play through their platform (along with many other apps). This too should be a problem to be looked into. Otherwise, id shut it down in a heartbeat. Here is yet another way FB can make you feel bad!
1
Facebook and it's weasely algorithm(s) wield far too much power, not just in the U.S., but in the world.
Zuckerberg offers up a faux transparency, or just lies, as in, "only you have control over your personal information", when in fact, only Facebook does.
User information is parsed and sold with an eye for profit, but not an eye on the law. They'll take anyone's money, leading to political corruption, like Cambridge Analytica, Russian ad buys seeking to divide democratic republics worldwide, and now this, sexual discrimination on forms ad buyers fill out to place job ads.
These are generated by Facebook, so they are definitely abetting the problem. It would be interesting to see their ad sales records, worldwide, and the forms advertisers had to fill out. In other words, how strictly were they vetted. It seems not at all.
And Zuckerberg's "aw shucks, we're just a forum to connect with friends" just doesn't ring true. He and his corporation gave gotten very rich by "turning their heads" as they have irresponsibly sold user information.
4
Amazing, since many of the ads go in precisely the other direction, shown only to women. Almost all bias in 2018 is against men and whites, but but you never hear that story in today’s media. In a professional journalism job board I’m a member of, perhaps a quarter of job listings explicitly prevent men and whites from applying, almost always by well-meaning (but nonetheless discriminatory) liberal journalists. I’ve never seen an an ad forbidding women or people of color however. But of course the media seizes on such evidence while ignoring the counter-evidence when it involves denying women. People are growing impatient with the double standard.
5
@NB
Women and minorities have been "impatient" about white male privilege for a long time. One would like to think you speak of a "double standard" ironically. Sadly, I doubt that is the case.
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Ridiculous... we're taking this too far...
Targeting advertising at one group isn't the same as saying the other group cannot have that job.
It would be like me, a white male, suing Ebony Magazine for directing ads at black women, and not me.
Ridiculous.
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@J
Sure, but a while male can still buy and read Ebony. Under these conditions a person of a gender not targeted would not even have a chance to see the ad for work. That's a problem.
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@J I agree with neal, by excluding one group from being able to see the ad the client is discriminating in its hiring practices. And FB is adding in that discrimination by allowing there client to chose which sex he is targeting the ads to go to.
6
@neal Fair enough. How about this---forbid facebook from sending out any ads that would exclude any specific group.
1
"[...] and look forward to defending our practices."
No, you *amend* your practices when you facilitate the violation of federal law and discriminate against women.
Pretty simple.
18
This is just the beginning. I have LinkedIn recruiter, an expensive tool, which now permits me to restrict my search results by graduation year. E.g. limit my results to only show 1995 to 2010 university graduates. Ageism is rampant.
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This reeks of victimhood. It is not Facebook's responsibility to police what people choose to target.
The advertiser has every right to target whom he/she wants to. That is not discrimination, that is called freedom of choice. Discrimination arises when you are deliberately denied opportunities when you are already in the pool of qualified candidates of the employers choosing.
By this measure, women can sue a sperm bank for not advertising to them as well. Or for that matter, they can sue a bar for not advertising to them for a bouncer's position. it's just absurd.
This is just another way of using political correctness to make a fast buck from a large company.
9
@Ram, Not so. A media outlet (newspaper, radio station, tv station, magazine, or web communications provider has the right to control the content it “publishes”. Freedom of the press prohibits THE GOVERNMENT from censoring content. It does not prohibit private entities from determining content in its outlets.
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@Ram and @stevevelo --
The government does not have the right to censor media or internet outlets, per se, unless the published content violates American law. That would cover hate speech, vicious bullying, and any discrimination by color, age or sex.
It would also cover ads purchased with the sole purpose of affecting election choices in an underhanded way (like Cambridgr Analytica).
Facebook is a worldwide site, and as tempting as those ad revenues are, it's incumbent on them to follow the law and vigourously vette their advertisers.
Ram, employers do choose who they want, with full-on ageism, sexism and racism coming into play, once they meet the person or see their CVs.
Facebook is supporting discrimination with its form advertisers must fill out, then funneling discriminatory ads to a market chosen by their algorithm.
This is against the law, negligent and done for more revenue.
2
Wow, really helping the Lean In movement...
6
Mark Zuckerberg will not testify until the FBI investigates...
Then he only may come out of his compound - home...
Does Zuckerberg have like a huge plug in thingy that has ALL the data from ALL the people that log in to his site(s)?
2
Facebook should have a master list of all employment ads that anyone access.
8
Facebook isn't the only online company doing this type of thing. If you look at Indeed, Dice, Monster, and some of the other online employment platforms I'm sure you'd find the same sort of discrimination being practiced. I receive emails from a few like Zip Recruiter and it seems as if they send out whatever looks like a match no matter how much I try to narrow it down in terms of geographical area or position.
In truth, all Facebook and LinkedIn do is to practice the same sort of discrimination we see in everyday life. The more things change the more they stay the same.
11
From the very beginning of FAcebook's fame and debacle it was quite obvious that the man who started Facebook hated or ridiculed women. It was so obvious. I did join after a while but gave very little information which I refused to expand. So it is no surprise that he leaves women out of good deals and opportunities. Even thought he has been warned he probably does it on auto control.
3
@BKC
If you dont think hospitals, universities, and social service agencies are doing the same thing but only targeting women you are naive.
1
Now I get it - I wondered why I kept seeing obviously traditional male jobs - I have a gender neutral name.
11
Facebook is just a platform
3
As a regular Facebook user who gets lots of business that way, and boosts posts, I suggest that gender and age and should not be part of the specification process when boosting a post.
17
I’m surprised age discrimination isn’t mentioned. That seems to be a problem as well.
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Personally, I don't want to do business with anyone who uses this platform. Nothing turns me away faster. I think facebook is a detriment to society, and I can get by without them. Anyone using facebook for business doesn't want mine.
25
You really don't even need to call Facebook or any other corporate-speak company for comment on a story like this.
We know they will will just regurgitate their usual PR lines that "Our No. 1 priority is (INSERT 'avoiding discrimination of any kind' or "the safety of our customers" or "whatever the topic is".
You can add "Our No. 1 priority is" to the list of lines that should alert people the corporate-speak person is lying. The list also includes "Trust us, we're from the government."
6
Hey guys, guess what!
Facebook did something sneaky, oppressive, and bad!
They aren't the bad guys, though. No, no. Definitely not. Just let them prove to you how moral and concerned they are! All you need to do is give them more information...
28
What if Facebook can use its data, and show that 90% of clicks to a certain job ad came from males. And that it costs $100 per 1000 ad impression (view). At that point you have a limited number of impressions available to you and your budget. So requiring the ads fall on 50/50 male/female would wouldn't be as effective on the female side.
Should it then only be shown to 1 male for every 9 females so that an equal number of males/females are likely to click it and apply? Or more likely, a 50/50 view should still be used, but the male impressions should cost 9 times the female impressions, since the click rate is so much higher.
9
@MH The same could be said for responses to ye old newspaper classified ads, but: SO WHAT? It's still against the law to exclude applicants based on gender, race, and religion.
18
It seems rather ridiculous that folks are targeting FB rather than the employer. FB simply provides some code that allows the advertiser to select a gender that they wish to reach with a message. They do not select who sees the message, that is purely at the advertisers discretion. Presumably the reason the complainants chose FB, rather than the advertiser, is that targeting FB generates more publicity and they presume that FB has more money to extort than the advertiser.
6
Facebook is becoming more and more something to be ashamed of using.
30
Perhaps the only time in history that a Facebook user has wanted to see more ads - oh yeah - the lawyers are involved - that is why.
2
Well if your are looking for a job you want to see more Help Wanted ads.
Or, did you already know that and hoped others wouldn't notice?
7
@Mariemuch
well no - logically - if you want to see employment ads then you want to see opportunities that relate to you and not simply more employment ads.
1
@SteveRR It's illegal to discriminate. Simple as that. There are no such things as men's jobs or women's jobs. So anyone looking should see every ad. Got it?
7
You know my mother used to say that if there was a rhino in the living room, my father's nose would tell him it was there before his eyes would.
Pretty much all jobs need organization and the ability to find required items. Since men are not as good at organizing and finding things as women are (can your husbands locate the milk in the fridge?), I think women will generally make better employees.
We may not be as strong on average but at least we don't need a continual resupply of items that we can no longer find.
4
So you’re saying you’d be OK with discriminating against men in hiring because of a gender stereotype? By the way, my wife loses things all the time and has no sense of organization.
And what about discriminating against people over 50?
42
This seems pretty simple: FB must eliminate the gender and age options for all job ads, leaving only legal ways to limit the reach, such as by geographic area. I would imagine that FB engineers could do that very quickly, eliminating the ability for employers to discriminate through ads on their platform.
Another important note: FB has 3 gender options (male, female and custom), so by giving the option to choose male or female or both male and female, it would seem that anyone who does not identify as cis-gendered is automatically being left out of seeing these ads. Only if the employer chooses "all" will other gendered folks be able to see the ads.
13
If Zuck truly wanted to be the good global citizen he claims to want to be, he could say, Facebook doesn't permit targeting by gender or age, period. See how easy that was?
1
Yes! That’s what I came here’s to say! FB wants to appear progressive about gender identity, but then offers only binary gender options - gross.
1
You would think that the "Einsteins" at Facebook would know about such discrimination by now. But then good help is hard to find - when your first criteria is cheap
7
If Ulta Beauty wants to run an ad on Facebook, should it be required to target its ad towards the male 18-30 demographic?
9
@Shea Do you understand the difference between an ad for a job and an ad for a lipstick? If Ulta was to place an ad on Facebook saying they are hiring for the holidays, yes they are required to advertise with EVERYONE. If they are advertising their holiday gifts, they certainly do not have to advertise to 18-30 year old males although gender fluidity is a common thing now so maybe Ulta should.
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@Shea it’s an important point, actually. The beauty industry is overwhelmingly female, but the imbalance is not viewed as discriminatory against men. But of course naturally self-selection of the tech or film business towards men *must* be discriminatory and constantly redressed with affirmative action. The double standards of modern liberalism’s perceived victim class is becoming tiresome and grating.
@Shea
As a heterosexual male in this age range, I think it's absolutely valid for Ulta to market to them because many in this demographic have partners, and getting gifts for one's partners is a really common thing.
The point here is that lipstick is not required by law to be advertised in a way that does not discriminate, whereas employment is.
Mostly, I wanted to defend the marketing of products for women to men.
1
If the majority of applicants to a specific job are men in the age of 21 - 51, the employer would want to target his ads to that demographic, not to discriminate but to use their advertising budget to best results.
Is it discriminatory to advertise for jobs in Men's Health or another outlet that specifically targets a male demographic of a certain age?
12
@Dmitri no, advertising in Mens Health doesn't limit who actually *sees* the ad in the magazine. FB specifically customizes the ads seen by each user. While Mens Health readers are primarily men, anyone could pick it up and read it. Not that they run job ads anyway, unlike FB again!
19
@Dmitri:
Everybody can buy Men's Health, including women (and some do). There is no box you can check on Facebook that turns on posts that Facebook does not want you to see.
18
It has been proven that ads have a higher engagement level when it depicts the viewer's gender. If the organization was also running a parallel campaign where the ads had women in the images and excluded men from the targeting parameters, would this still be discrimination?
Simply some food for thought.
2
@KC In the article, the reporting indicates that yes, such a parallel ad targeted to women would be legal.
6
This is what happens when a 20+ year old, arguably "on the spectrum" and having created an app to find "chicks" but not by actually talking to them lucks out on a beyond viral startup, changes the world by accident, attracts money-above-all-else wolves, in a near totally unregulated medium. And we're just seeing the very tops of many icebergs, from FB and many others. This is why we have government . . . wait, that's moribund at the moment.
48
Not only are the ads discriminatory, they are incredible short-sighted and simplistic in their targeting. If I were a man looking for work, I'd be relying to some degree on the women - spouse, mother, sisters - in my life to be equally invested in my getting a job. In other words, women who see ads on Facebook posting jobs I might be qualified for.
49
So these woman are upset they aren't seeing ads for jobs they would never take? Newsflash, woman - these types of jobs have probably given chances to woman to just have them not show up or complain about the tasks of the job. Not surprised they're looking for men on a physical job, they want bodies to move, not mouth movement.
10
@Ryan That's just straight up sexism.
42
It’s specifically because of sexist, ignorant comments like this that rules need to be in place to discourage selection based on gender.
30
I do not know how the ads get "targeted" but the only "thing" I see is that men are doing the "heavy work". So does this mean that these ads must show the politically correct woman installer?
4
@Richard Frauenglass
Perhaps you could do the heavy work of actually reading the article and see how the ads were targeted by being sent to only men or only women. There are some woman who have the same muscle power than men, and some men who have the same caring power as women.
Have you been in a hospital lately? There are a growing number of male nurses and they do a great job. Nurses are paid a lot more than window installers. Do you think it would be fair to discriminate against some nurses because they are men and limit them to install windows or picking up trash?
Incidentally there are plenty of women truck drivers --- how much upper body muscles are required to drive a truck?
But I agree there are difference in musculature between most men and women but not so individually.
In terms of difference it has long been known that many men are able to produce burst of strength while women are able to produce lesser strength but for much longer time, aka women (not all) tend to have more endurance than men (not all).
60
@Kati@Kati I am glad I gave you the opportunity to get that all out. (There is another expression from another time, but it would be considered sexist, so I will not use it.) And yes I did to the heavy work and read the article. And yes I did read the part re: wanting men in a certain area. But there does remain a significant number of jobs where sheer physicality is essential. RE: Truck as one example -- it is not the driving -- power steering and all that. It is the loading/unloading which can and does create certain problems.
Not everything is absolute and that has been, is, and will continue to be the "equality" issue.
1
@Richard Frauenglass No. But the advertisers are not to invent criteria that are unrelated to ability to do the job. There are some number of men who are unable to do furniture assembly or heavy lifting, and there are some (different, likely) number of women who are similarly unable. Likewise for age, race, religion, etc. The only relevant criteria are job-related ability and willingness to do the job in a professional manner.
34
Newspapers are not ad agencies and yet they are not allowed to print ads that discriminate so it is really irrelevant what Facebook calls itself - it’s actions are discriminatory and it’s in writing .
66
Sounds like age discrimination, too. Plenty of 51 year-olds could assemble merchandise.
120
@M Gleason • Even a few 60 year olds. Ask my daughter; after her recent move I assembled a small IKEA showroom in her apartment. Lived to tell about it.
32
Age discrimination, sex discrimination, spying on people’s likes and dislikes to help unscrupulous companies like Cambridge Analytica subvert our democratic process, etc., etc. Why are people still using Facebook? Why aren’t they leaving in droves? Pathetic.
90
"We look forward to defending our practices once we have an opportunity to review the complaint.” Uh ... shouldn't that be something more along the lines of "We will review our policies and practices to see if the complaint has merit" ?? Perhaps instead of "defending" the practices before reviewing them, they will have to be changed. Much more likely IMHO.
49
@Tom Corrigan
They will just add woman onto the criteria of the publication, probably have to pay for since it will reach more people, and then just disregard their resumes after the fact - like most tech or physical labor hiring practices.
4
Wow, Ryan, you’re going all out to spew nonsense about women today. Biased much?
7
For approximately 15 years in the 60s and 70s, I managed a group of employees (in The NYT Classified Dept.) whose task was prescreening classified ads for violation of policy and law, including sex discrimination. We missed some (we were human), but we did a pretty good job. Facebook, with its rather pathetic reliance on algorithms, has tried to eliminate the human factor. It’s now paying the penalty for its tunnel vision and hubris. Glad to see this.
107