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Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men

271 points by danso 8y ago

mesozoic 8y ago
Suprise! When you want to get actual productive results from advertising progressivism ain't so useful.
- Endy 8y ago
  Surprise! Advertising is evil as an industry and violates the few good pieces of law we have to benefit everyone, not just those in power!
spullara 8y ago
I wonder if job discrimination suits are ever going to be filed against Hollywood. They literally choose employees at a minimum by race, age and gender. Actual skill is the last thing they look at.
mankash666 8y ago
We need to stop treating Facebook or any digital infrastructure as culpable when it's users are the ones responsible. As far as Facebook's concerned, it's an advertiser picking a demographic. I bet they don't know what the ad is about! What next? Hold AT&T culpable for providing internet to these advertisers?
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  This law is nothing new to digital advertisers. The New York Times is also forbidden by law to advertise job or housing ads that discriminate against protected classes in its classifieds page, and this has been an uncontroversial state of affairs for decades. Facebook is being asked to play by the same rules as everyone else.
- mmt 8y ago
  > What next? Hold AT&T culpable for providing internet to these advertisers? If AT&T is otherwise interacting with the content (e.g. throttling or zero-rating based on it being an ad), I don't see a problem with that. Traditionally, common carriers were protected under the premise that they didn't discriminate based on content. In this respect, I think internet carriers are putting themselves in a precarious position in not supporting net neutrality. Once a carrier shows that it can (and does) discriminate content, what makes it different from a publisher like a newspaper?
- scarface74 8y ago
  Facebook is not culpable for what it’s users post. They are just as culpable when they accept money from advertisers as any newspaper would be. Apple for instance would be sued into oblivion if it let anyone post a song for sale on iTunes without any vetting for copyrighted content.
calimac 8y ago
Facebook is not the policemen of the internet. Is it ok for your Tesla to have ludicrous mode? Believe me I have serious issues with zuckbook but their ads platform filtering selects is not an issue. You cannot assume that targeting men automatically means that they are discriminating against women. #FlawedLogic There are circumstances where I would optimize 1 ad for a man and another for a woman to get get better conversion than a general ad but still advertise equally to both genders.
SamReidHughes 8y ago
Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18016576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18016576
microcolonel 8y ago
News flash: the titles of these ads are clearly not as likely to be attractive to women as they are to men. If you are completely ignorant of figures and study in this area, it's easy to get incensed over this completely unsurprising, trivial fact. Advertisement and listing are two completely separate matters. If you are trying to convince people to consider your listing, it makes perfect sense to use language (and imagery?) which will be attractive to the demographic it is visible to. The listing isn't somehow less available to people who weren't targeted as effectively by a specific message.
beatpanda 8y ago
This is unambiguously illegal and Facebook could stop doing this anytime it wants. Craigslist reminds its users about anti-discrimination laws before they post and provides a means for users to flag illegal ads.
- sneak 8y ago
  Right now the targeting information for an ad is not disclosed to the recipient, so it's not possible for an end user to know if a given ad is illegal or not unless there's discriminatory information directly in the copy, which is pretty rare.
  - lclarkmichalek 8y ago
    If you click the three dots on the top right of an ad in the newsfeed, you should be able to press 'Why am I seeing this' to see an explanation of the targeting for an ad. I can see one on my newsfeed that says: > One reason you're seeing this ad is that Castore Sportswear wants to reach people who have visited their website or used one of their apps. This is based on customer information provided by Castore Sportswear. > There may be other reasons you're seeing this ad, including that Castore Sportswear wants to reach people ages 18 and older who live in the United Kingdom. This is information based on your Facebook profile and where you've connected to the internet.
- oh_sigh 8y ago
  Not really, because some jobs are legitimately only available to people a certain gender and so facebook would still need to make a judgement call.
  - jazzyjackson 8y ago
    ???? like what?
    - onehedgehog 8y ago
      Is it hard to think of a single job posting that would only be available to only men OR women? Entertainment jobs are especially constrained: Exotic male dancer, exotic female dancer, specific roles in tv/movies/plays, Hooters waitress, etc.
patcheudor 8y ago
Blaming Facebook muddies the water a bit. Ultimately the companies advertising on Facebook broke the law when they checked the wrong boxes. Facebook should; however, make that information public knowledge by allowing the public to see the advertising parameters of any given ad if they are curious but to my knowledge, no law requires it. Maybe it's time to start having a conversation about the need advertising transparency.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Can this box be checked legally?
  - nbar1 8y ago
    Yes, you can advertise to only one sex. The problem is they advertised a job ad.
    - cm2187 8y ago
      Depends on the job. You won’t send a female cleaner in a male locker room. Also some recruiter are explicitely trying to correct a gender imbalance and are therefore actively seeking female candidates. Does that become unethical to advertise to women?
      - LocalPCGuy 8y ago
        That's a bad example. There are many jobs where men clean female locker rooms/restrooms and visa versa. But I agree with others (and I think you) that it isn't Facebook's responsibility legally to ensure it isn't possible for companies to break the law. Might be able to make a moral argument, but that's a different argument.
      - bsder 8y ago
        > Depends on the job. You won’t send a female cleaner in a male locker room. Um, the cleaner is usually coming in when the locker room is empty so sex doesn't matter.
Bucephalus355 8y ago
Marketing segmentation wasn’t really used at all until the mid-70’s to deal with a period declining sales in the US economy. Old people weren’t even treated as a specific segment beyond 65+ until like 1990. A very productive world existed without any significant marketing targeting other than geolocation and some other rough measures. Perhaps we are returning to such a state of things.
- tlb 8y ago
  The practice goes back much further than that. Consider two popular magazines from 1931: https://archive.org/stream/PopularMechanics1931#page/n9 https://archive.org/stream/PopularMechanics1931#page/n9 https://archive.org/details/TheLadiesHomeJournalV48N12193112 https://archive.org/details/TheLadiesHomeJournalV48N12193112 The ads are not the same due to marketing segmentation.
  - sah2ed 8y ago
    Interesting links. For a moment there, I thought the ad by Motor Institute of America shown on the page of Popular Mechanics you linked to, was also present in your second link to the The Ladies Home Journal, albeit with a different ad copy.
patmcc 8y ago
I'm a bit mixed about this; it is clearly discriminatory to publish a job ad that says "women need not apply", but it doesn't feel inherently discriminatory to advertise a job in, say, "Men's Health" but not "Cosmopolitan" magazine. Or to advertise on a particular television channel or program (whose viewers may not match the population at large). That's just how advertising works. Is that crazy? Would this be different if, for example, Facebook was targeting people for job ads based on "people who like action movies" or "people who like romance novels" (I'm stereotyping here, but just assume you pick a category that ends up being a decent proxy for gender)?
- meowface 8y ago
  Yes, it would be very different. For example, the two things you listed are probably rather bad proxies for gender (even if it's only hypothetical). All they had to do was pick the niche they're going for (which may incidentally turn out to be highly skewed to one gender) rather than making it 100% one gender. I honestly don't even understand the purpose of advertising anything to only men or only women. (The obvious answer would be "sexism", but presumably the advertiser is making some assumption of economic benefit for only targeting one or the other.)
  - gascan 8y ago
    I honestly don't even understand the purpose of advertising anything to only men or only women. If you pay per view, it's entirely rational to target towards the demographic that produces the most spend for your ad budget. Why would you waste money advertising, e.g., mascara or sanitary pads to men? Sure, there's probably some infinitesimal fraction of men who would be interested, but targeting them profitably is not a trivial exercise.
    - meowface 8y ago
      In classic rubber duck-debugging style, I ended up realizing that as soon as I pressed submit. In that case I suppose it's not very ethically questionable for things that are very clearly 100% (within a minuscule margin of error) men's only (prostate health, etc.) or women's only (sanitary pads). I guess the real quandary is for stuff that's male-dominated like hard, dangerous physical labor (coal mining etc.), but not 100% men. If a recruiter can statistically prove that the most efficient use of their advertising dollars to hire for a coal mining job is by targeting only men, 1) is it sexist and/or unethical, and 2) should it be legal?
danso 8y ago
I’ve never tried to place a FB ad, so I don’t know what the interface looks like. But wouldn’t it be fairly straightforward on their end to disable gender (or other protected classes) as options for targeting when it comes to job or housing ads? Or are advertisers not required to choose a “category” for their ad, in the way that on Craigslist, you have to select a category to post in? Even if there is no such categorization, it’s not a difficult NLP challenge to detect that the content of an ad is for job hiring, or to know that the advertiser is based in the U.S. FB could implement a warning/reminder dialog similar to how GMail tells you that you haven’t actually included an attachment yet.
contem 8y ago
From the original pitch deck: > thefacebook.com allows for targeted advertisement on the basis of any (or a combination of) the following parameters: > College/University, Sexual Orientation, Degree Type, Zip Code, Concentration, Dating interests, Courses taken, Personal Interests, Class Year, Clubs and Jobs, House/Dormitory, Political Bent, Age, Number of friends, Gender, Site Usage. So blatant targeted advertisement has always been part of Facebook. Lots of (now wealthy) investors and early adopters had no problem that its users were being targeted on the basis of their sexuality. The market will go where it wants to go: Instead of explicitly targeting men, you now target people that liked WWE, Family Guy, study business school, and searched for "hackernews". Or you make the advertisement itself appealing to men (and take the small loss on an irrelevant audience).
- PeterisP 8y ago
  There's a difference between the types of advertisement. It's okay to target ads based on gender if you're advertising shirts or shampoo or whatever. It's illegal if you're advertising jobs.
  - contem 8y ago
    Yeah, there may be a legal difference, and there has to be a point where the majority starts to say: Hey! That's wrong! I think the fundamental difference is null. Or maybe I am just one of the first to start to say: Hey! That's wrong!
Meph504 8y ago
(from another thread very similar to this) I really don't see how the companies placing the ads, aren't going to get hammered for it. But Facebook is doing nothing illegal, unless the ads, were placed for jobs with Facebook. Just as newspaper/radio/tv aren't required not to post job adverts that violate the EEOC's rules. For clarity, According to the EEOC (https://www1.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/index.cfm?renderforprin... https://www1.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/index.cfm?renderforprin...) Recruitment It is also illegal for an employer to recruit new employees in a way that discriminates against them because of their race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. For example, an employer's reliance on word-of-mouth recruitment by its mostly Hispanic work force may violate the law if the result is that almost all new hires are Hispanic.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Just as newspaper/radio/tv aren't required not to post job adverts that violate the EEOC's rules. http://panewsmedia.org/legal/legaltopics/legalemployment http://panewsmedia.org/legal/legaltopics/legalemployment
- mbrumlow 8y ago
  > For example, an employer's reliance on word-of-mouth recruitment by its mostly Hispanic work force may violate the law if the result is that almost all new hires are Hispanic. I think the key here is may. Nothing I have read seems to indicate that targeting men only violates the EEOC rules. The rule only seems to be if the result is almost all new hires are X. What if we had a good pool of men working, and the company was a perfect example of diversity but found that it lacked women needed for a spot to keep their 50/50 ratio. Now let's say they had a lot of qualified men candidates already lined up. Why should the be forced to put ads out for men they know they won't hire because the next 5 hires are going to be women to keep their diversity ratio? Side note (off topic), I was unaware of the EEOC rules on this sort of thing and am a bit shocked knowing that on HN and various places on the internet I have seen people promoting jobs that flat out say "POC or Woman applicants will only be considered". It Think Evergreen and UCLA recently had job postings with this type of wording recently. How is that not a EOC violation?
pteredactyl 8y ago
I don't understand the problem. The flipside would be they're letting Job Advertisers only target women. I wonder what those numbers look like: What percentage of job advertisers only target women? If I'm spending ad dollars, why would I not choose the most effective form of advertising for me? That's not to say they're not hiring women. In which case it'd be more dubious. Last week in the Bay Area I heard a TSA radio advertisement, in which they said, 'women and people of color strongly encouraged to apply.' Imagine the outrage if they had said 'white men strongly encouraged to apply'? All the qualification based on immutable characteristics, versus actual ability to do the job, makes me feel very uneasy.
- ALittleLight 8y ago
  It's interesting to think about. If I'm looking for someone to ride on a garbage truck, there's probably a 95% chance the future employee will be male, but acting on this expectation, by advertising to men instead of women - getting more employees per dollar spent, is sexist. Likewise, if I needed to hire an au pair I'd have to advertise to men and women equally?
  - pteredactyl 8y ago
    I don't think it's sexist to target men for a job posting. You know the job, you know what it entails and you know what works behaviorally and physically. There are differences between genders. That's okay. I do think it's sexist to not hire a qualified women for the job because she's a women ( esp. in the garbage collector scenario). Like you hate women or something and you don't hire them ( funny story I heard a women on the sidewalk casually say she hated men. Never heard a man say that... ) The same for the flipside. I do think it's a sexist double standard to say it's not okay to target men for a job and not mention anything about the flipside: it's okay to only target women.
    - JamisonM 8y ago
      The law says that it is "sexist" (i.e. discrimination) to target advertising in a way that denies qualified women the opportunity to apply for a particular job. In the end the net result of targeting only men is the same as refusing to hire women, it denies otherwise qualified women opportunities that they are deserving of. That this has a cost is understood by those who wrote the law, they decided those costs are worth it.
jtms 8y ago
well guess what... the overwhelming majority of uber drivers ARE men - why would you want to waste your ad spend on a non-productive demo?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- Endy 8y ago
  Because of the law and the EEOC.
  - jtms 8y ago
    Google lets you target male/female demo's and, to my knowledge, always has. Literally every advertiser does this and always has. I am not sure why this article even exists. With demographic targeting in Google Ads, you can reach a specific set of potential customers who are likely to be within a particular age range, gender, parental status, or household income. For instance, if you run a fitness studio exclusively for women, demographic targeting could help you avoid showing your ads to men. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2580383?co=ADWORDS.IsAWNCustomer%3Dfalse&hl=en https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2580383?co=ADWO...
maerF0x0 8y ago
Another angle on the issue: If some company is doing something that is suboptimal (such as excluding a viable gender employee group) they will eventually be priced out of the market by competitors (because their inefficiencies will remove their competitiveness). I wonder how many of these things we should legislate against the "bad guy" vs. just ensure the proliferation/competitiveness of the "Good guys"?
- hyperpape 8y ago
  No. http://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/ http://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/
  - reversecs 8y ago
    It would be nice if you said what you objected to specifically and describe or specify how the link you've commented adds anything to the discussion.
    - hyperpape 8y ago
      The idea that companies will be forced by the market to correct discrimination is a nice idea in theory, but false. I think it's obviously false, but the article will help someone who likes to question the obvious.
      - zeroname 8y ago
        The whole "priced out of the market" idea is nonsense. That argument isn't even being made by Andreesen here though. The competitive disadvantage is true, by definition. It doesn't make sense to discriminate from a market perspective. The article only supports this: Greenspan got a competitive advantage by hiring women, because they were cheaper. The free market punishes discrimination. It doesn't end discrimination, but it gives an incentive for hiring women. If I identified as a woman, I frankly wouldn't be so worried about earning a bit less than my male counterparts, but rather about not being hired at all, because of all the legal risks associated with hiring women because of anti-discrimination laws. Nobody is getting sued for discrimination about firing some white boy.
kakarot 8y ago
This is a situation where you must ask yourself the very difficult question of what is more important, individual freedom or equality? I think it goes beyond egalitarianism, because I certainly think any female who wants to become a highly-paid programmer should be able to do so simply by building merit, without any additional barriers. I also think that any person, male or female, has the right to decide what demographics their private company is composed of. The extreme of this, a world where all high-paying jobs are dished out by misogynists, is definitely a problem that needs to be solved, but I don't think we are actually living in that world currently.
- Endy 8y ago
  To paraphrase Judge Dredd on this one, The Law is what's most important. The law is written to oppose injustice and as part of doing so, inequity Follow the law. Work to have it changed if you think your public persona can survive fighting the EEOC's existence and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But follow the law first whether you like it or not, whether it's "profitable" or not.
- PeterisP 8y ago
  Yes, it surely is a situation where this question should be asked, however the question has been asked and "we the people" have decided (and written into law) that in this type of scenarios equality overrides individual freedom. In particular, it's been decided that in many cases (IIRC it starts to apply if the company has more than 15 employees) any person, male or female, does not have the right to decide what demographics their private company is composed of. That's it. This is the similar to "the right to swing your fist ends at my nose"; there is an inherent conflict between ability to choose demographics in your company and the ability of all demographics to get a fair job, we can't have both. We considered that this is a problem that needs to be solved and that such restrictions are going to be (part of) a solution. We may make different choices in future, but that's the one we currently have.
  - kakarot 8y ago
    > the right to swing your fist ends at my nose It isn't really fair to compare this to that. One is a clear case of one's freedom interfering on the freedom or safety of another. I don't think this situation is nearly that black and white.
spullara 8y ago
What if Facebook's algorithm determined that women weren't interested and stopped serving it to them automatically?
- anticensor 8y ago
  This is not a problem. It would be illegal if it was not served in the beginning.
yesenadam 8y ago
I once applied for a job as a porn actor (at a flatmate's joking suggestion). They replied saying they only wanted women, but weren't allowed to say that in the ad. That seemed a silly waste of time.
- hyperpape 8y ago
  As other comments in the thread make clear, they didn't understand the law.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    I'm in Australia. I'm don't know what the law is here, I guess what they said it was.
hajile 8y ago
I see a bunch of claims, but is this actually illegal in the US? More specifically, is it illegal to selectively advertise a job provided that the business doesn't profile during actual hiring? If I post job listings in upper-class white neighborhoods only, would that be illegal? What if I had one ad that targeted men and another which targeted women? What if the male version was designed to be successful while the female version was designed to discourage response?
- PeterisP 8y ago
  Yes, USA laws require that jobs be advertised on a nondiscriminatory basis. https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/index.cfm https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/index.cfm is a decent summary. All the examples you provide would be illegal. As the provided example states "For example, an employer's reliance on word-of-mouth recruitment by its mostly Hispanic work force may violate the law if the result is that almost all new hires are Hispanic."
- matz1 8y ago
  Unfortunately yes, the descrimination law in the US is ridiculous and complicated.
SenseiMaster 8y ago
Is this different from software companies specifically targeting women and certain races? Some companies even have specific internships that are dedicated to women and certain races. When software companies do that, it's usually seen as a "legitimate" way to increase the number of certain gender and races at the company.
cbovis 8y ago
On the fence about this one. Whilst targeting individual groups can certainly lead to inequalities there is the problem of tailoring ads to an audience. One way a company may wish to make their ads more appealing is by showing relatable people in adverts. If a company is running two variations of the same job advert, one featuring women and one featuring men, distributing coverage across the two variations evenly, then is there still an issue? I would argue not, yet introducing a non-gender targeting rule would make this impossible to do and could in fact have the opposite affect to what was desired by the regulation.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Yes it would still be a problem. I can’t speak for job postings but I can speak for real estate. There are certain things that you are not allowed to say in advertisement or as a real estate agent. Even in jobs, you would be walking a very fine line if an obviously pregnant woman walked in and you started mentioning that the place you work is great for mothers.
  - bagacrap 8y ago
    Could you elaborate on what line that is? How would you go slightly farther and cross it?
    - scarface74 8y ago
      I don’t think it’s prima facie illegal to mention that, but it does open you up to a discrimination lawsuit. The chances of winning might be slim, but why take the chance? Crossing the line would be “This job requires a lot of travel,are you sure you could handle it with a newborn?”
  - commandlinefan 8y ago
    This sort of thing ought to disturb more people than it seems to - it should be really, really obvious when you're breaking the law, and it should be something that you can only do with actual harmful intent. This sort of thing goes a step worse, though, and actually makes _good_ intent unlawful.
gehwartzen 8y ago
For those interested here is a link to The Code of Federal Regulations: Title 29 (Labor): Part 1604 “Guidelines On Discrimination Because of Sex” which describes the relevant legal requirements/interpretations pertaining to employer sex discrimination. https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2011-title29-vol4/xml/CFR-2011-title29-vol4-part1604.xml https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2011-title29-vol4/xml/CFR-...
- zeroname 8y ago
  " § 1604.5 Job opportunities advertising. It is a violation of title VII for a help-wanted advertisement to indicate a preference, limitation, specification, or discrimination based on sex unless sex is a bona fide occupational qualification for the particular job involved. The placement of an advertisement in columns classified by publishers on the basis of sex, such as columns headed “Male” or “Female,” will be considered an expression of a preference, limitation, specification, or discrimination based on sex." Seems to me like they're legally in the clear, as long as the ad itself doesn't contain any indication. Same as only advertising in a publication whose readers are 99% male - Google's gender metrics aren't even that precise.
  - sievebrain 8y ago
    This does imply the TSA are breaking the law given the story above about how they "strongly encourage" women to apply.
    - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
      I'm sure there's a team of lawyers that pored over the exact language used and made sure it skirts the laws; they say "we strongly encourage", not "we prefer".
      - sievebrain 8y ago
        They're equivalent. People strongly encourage things they prefer. It would be a very Kafkaesque judgement that one can strongly encourage a certain gender to apply and not violate that statute. Of course, it's also the outcome I'd expect, but biased application of the law is a separate issue.
j16sdiz 8y ago
I think the problem is with the employer, not the platform. I don't understand why Facebook should be blamed here. How is it possible for a global platform cater each and every local custom?
- aikah 8y ago
  > I think the problem is with the employer, not the platform No, the platform gives the tools to specifically filter by sex. Facebook is enabling sexual discrimination. > every local custom euphemism You mean the law, the very thing that will get your in legal troubles if you break it. I'm pretty sure it's illegal to discriminate by sex when it comes to employment in US, and Facebook is an american company.
  - zeroname 8y ago
    > No, the platform gives the tools to specifically filter by sex. Facebook is enabling sexual discrimination. Like any ad seller, Facebook offers displaying ads based on demographics. This is a basic requirement for many advertisers, because a lot of products happen to be bought exclusively by one gender. You have a right to buy tampons, you don't have a right to be displayed advertisements for tampons. Even if there were legal problems with those particular Uber ads, it's Uber's responsibility to follow the law, it's not Facebooks responsibility to screen every ad for possible infringements.
    - Endy 8y ago
      I disagree. If they know they are hosting employment ads, they need to be required to perform to legal standards. That means that, minimum, an employment ad should be seen differently than a regular ad by the algorithm and by the backend - no demographic weighting can be allowed within the protected classes; unless the employer applies for a BFOQ, makes it clear what that BFOQ is, and has it authorized by either an EEOC rep or an employment law professional within the ad platform (in this case Facebook). Otherwise they're clearly in violation of the law and knowingly so.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
root_axis 8y ago
It is unimaginable to me that Facebook or any company should ever be obligated to show ads to anyone for any reason. Don't use Facebook as a job search platform. Facebook is just a website, you don't have to use it for everything. The fact that some people are not receiving ads on Facebook, in any sane world, has got to be the sole prerogative of Facebook. Nobody pays money to receive ads on Facebook, there is nothing to lose by just uninstalling the app. Facebook should offer a "Premium Ads" program where you pay a monthly subscription to see all the ads discriminatory advertisers weren't willing to show you on their own dime!
horsecaptin 8y ago
Does this mean that any company that targets an ad to men / women only on social media platforms can be sued for discrimination?
- Endy 8y ago
  No, this is specific to employment law. You can advertise products or services to whomever you wish. Employment must have equal opportunity.
  - horsecaptin 8y ago
    I mistyped. I meant targets a gender for employment.
- PeterisP 8y ago
  No, there are a bunch of areas that have specific laws prohibiting gender discrimination. Employment is one of them, housing and credit also have similar laws, but not most consumer goods and services.
zonidjan 8y ago
Funny thing: it's not illegal to only hire men. Just like Hooter's would never hire a (male) waiter.
- Endy 8y ago
  Hooter's gets in with a loophole. Their waitresses are technically "entertainers", which means that their cup size could actually be considered a BFOQ. It's a weird middle space that exists because Congress in the '60s was concerned about Hollywood and Broadway.
zonidjan 8y ago
The most prominent organization named is Uber, who it's safe to assume is running multiple ad's at a time, which probably includes some targeted at men and some targeted at women (even if it's as simple as changing out the stock photo). Oh, and "The Pennsylvania State Police, for example, boosted a post targeted to men ..." well of course, why would they pay to advertise to females when they don't need to? You should go research the demographics of police (or visit your local donut shop): almost exclusively male, because most females don't want to do it. And if a female does want to... well, then she should go apply?
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  > almost exclusively male, because most females don't want to do it. Needless generalization; in the less violent Netherlands, there's plenty of women in law enforcement, and you often see both men and women together patrolling. They are actively hired because they bring different traits to the table to de-escalate a situation. Of course, the US is much different, much more violent, much less safe for police, and it's a self-reinforcing system.
vorticalbox 8y ago
I don't think this article have gain as much traction if the title read "Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Women"
- Endy 8y ago
  I sincerely hope you are wrong, even if I understand your point. On the other hand, the case would still be just as open-and-shut. Violating both the law and EEOC regulation doesn't matter if you're doing it for one side or the other. Unless you can prove that sex is a BFOQ, you are not allowed to recruit or advertise in a way that weights the job on one side of the scale or the other.
lawnchair_larry 8y ago
What if employers create a different ad for men and for women, targeting both, but appealing to the target more effectively? It's often cited that the wording of a neutral sounding job ad can have a huge effect on the percentage of women that will apply. There's nothing illegal about what facebook is doing, although there is potential for misuse.
jsonne 8y ago
Just as an FYI, in the past few hours there have been reports on some big Facebook advertising groups people are getting notifications about their anti-discrimination policies regarding jobs. As a matter of fact, they've, for a while, had an extra step for advertisers to verify they're in compliance for housing, lending, and career opportunities.
mbrumlow 8y ago
Not that I agree or disagree with the practice I can't help to see how people are so quick to want to talk about limiting what looks very much like free speech. If I wanted to spread a message person to person on the street. I think I would find it odd if the government had a say in who I told the message to. All this seems to be I'd a automated system of doing just that. So if I knew of a job at company X and I decided to tell my buddy John (cis gender male) but did not tell Jenny (cis grander female) would I be breaking any sort of rule? Or would I be forced to always find at lest one person of the opposite gender to also inform of the job? In any case why do we care what Facebook is doing. They are simply a tool. U less you are suggesting that advertisers should not be able to do anything based off gender...
basicplus2 8y ago
Its a bit silly to expect companies like facebook do the job of police or a government regulator.
Sol- 8y ago
Even if they remove the explicit gender category in their advertising interface, it seems relatively trivial to find proxies for gender (or race, or age, for that matter) to target a specific subgroup of people with your ads. It's possible to algorithmically bias the ad-targeting algorithms in such a way to achieve parity in whatever sensitive attribute you are concerned about, but that will come at the expense of utility of the targeting (since you will have to show it to more people who you actually don't want to target, just to achieve gender/race/age equality) - of course, that might not be so bad if your hypothesis is that the advertiser has a bad mental model of his target group to begin with and you think that Facebook should force him to make it more egalitarian. I don't think that will happen though, Facebook might remove explicit gender targeting, but I doubt it will do much to help with biased ads since people will just use proxies for gender etc. instead.
jokoon 8y ago
Politics, statistics and stereotypes have a reality. Sometimes you don't want to be politically correct, and you go along with what things actually are, what people want and what is already working. A company is not there to solve stereotypes. Just look at the proportion of women who can read code, or are actually interested in dealing with code. That's an issue. Same thing goes for people who do construction work, miners, the military, etc. I totally admit that it's a cynical opinion. There's are a lot of things civilization can do to define what humans do and how they behave. Gender might have deep implications, that cannot be changed by civilization and principles of equality.
- sgift 8y ago
  > A company is not there to solve stereotypes. That ties into the question if companies should have a responsibility to society or just be a vehicle to make money. Opinions differ on this. (Legality is another topic, but for the sake of this thread I propose to assume that this behavior is legal)
  - rspeer 8y ago
    For the sake of the thread, you could read the article or have some awareness of the topic instead of assuming. > “The ads themselves are illegal,” Galen Sherwin, an ACLU lawyer, said. “It’s been established for five decades.”
    - sgift 8y ago
      For the sake of the thread you could read the other comment threads and see that the "it is illegal" comment chain was already discussed. But then you'd have to use your brain and couldn't just try a "Hurty durty, you didn't read the article" snipe, right? And yes. People like you make me angry.
  - PeterisP 8y ago
    "for the sake of this thread I propose to assume that this behavior is legal" - it's not, in USA it's illegal to discriminate genders and some other groups in certain types of advertising (jobs and IIRC housing).
radoslawc 8y ago
Out of curiosity, can anyone post screenshot for this form to choose targeted demographics for Facebook's ads?
King-Aaron 8y ago
So the argument, as I see it here, is that companies should be forced to spend additional resources advertising to demographics that they have identified as not strong leads in their campaigns, so that overly virtuous people can feel happy about them spending money on something that likely won't concern them in the slightest. Righto. If the article's title was "Facebook is letting job advertisers target only women" or "Facebook is letting job advertisers target only people in their ideal demographic", I wonder if the discussion would be any different here.
- Endy 8y ago
  It has nothing to do with virtue, it's a matter of Facebook and its advertisers violating the written law. EEOC exists due to law, and all employers are required to abide by it. If you violate equal opportunity employment by discriminating for any one of a number of protected classes, you are acting unlawfully. Facebook should not be so openly allowed to violate the law, and for doing so, the individuals in the corporation as well as the corp itself should be charged with their crimes and assessed fines.
  - rimliu 8y ago
    Facebook does not employ anyone here, it's about ads.
    - Endy 8y ago
      If you allow an unlawful ad to exist on your platform, you are knowingly violating the law and should be punished.
      - King-Aaron 8y ago
        So if I were to say, "Hey guys, you can get two ounces of pure, uncut cocaine right here, right now... Just send me cash via PayPal and I'll post it to you today!" and no HN moderator removes this comment, then I have posted an unlawful advertisement on HN. By your standing, the operators are now violating the law as soon as a moderator glances across this shitpost, and would require punishment. While that's clearly a ridiculous thing at face value - and I am likely coming across as obtuse by mentioning it - it highlights just what's wrong with your position I feel. I would consider it unrealistic to expect a large-scale content platform like facebook to be liable for individual ads. (Perhaps they could be proactive in reporting offenders to the correct authorities, but a knee-jerk punishment doesn't seem appropriate to me).
hazbo 8y ago
I came across this tweet[0] the other day and in the replies there seemed to be many discussions sparked around the legalities of advertising / hiring based on immutable traits. From what I could gather (not a lawyer) based on what laws people were citing, is that it's "okay" to advertise in this manor, however it is not legal to actually make the hire taking into account these traits. In the case of this tweet, I'm not sure how I feel about this, as it's clear what their goal is: > empower and train black Computer Science students to land their first job which seems fine. However this goal can't be achieved if a white person ends up being hired. So does the ad imply that they will only hire a black computer science student? It seems like a bit of a grey area to me. And while I understand the article linked is about targeting only men for jobs and not for people of colour, they are similar on the basis that it is traits we have no control over. One other point I'd like to make here, is that IF people see this as Facebook "allowing" to filter by immutable traits, in this case Twitter is essentially doing the same, by allowing these kinds of posts. I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this. [0]: https://twitter.com/ryancarson/status/1039624079060267008 https://twitter.com/ryancarson/status/1039624079060267008
d--b 8y ago
People here need to be reminded that a job ad is not the same as a product ad. A job is what you do with your life, not some stuff you may want to buy. Society tells you: you should get a career and climb up the social ladder. Don't worry, every one has the same chances. But then the same society goes around your back and only tells your male friends that there may be an opportunity here or there? wtf? If I was a female developer, or a male nurse, I'd be fucking furious to know that this was happening. There are definitely some jobs that require the person to be male or female, or white, or jewish, or old, whatever. But that's not the norm. Whether or not it is a Facebook duty to remove the box is debatable, but if you are a recruiter and you tick the male box, you're clearly open to lawsuits.
dangerface 8y ago
It also lets you target only women, but thats fine...
jexah 8y ago
In the following, I assume either pay-per-impression, or pay-per-click with a limited pool size (ex. 500 views limit per day). In the former I assume the "cost" is monetary, in the latter I assume the "cost" is temporal. Genuinely curious about this, what if somebody is posting an ad for hiring labourers (brick layers, etc.)? Do they pay the cost by also targeting women? What about targeting ads for hiring beauticians at females? Is that wrong? Should the company pay the cost to also advertise to men in the off-chance that they catch one of the very few male beauticians? To me it makes sense that advertisers, regardless of what they are advertising (job, product, service, etc.) should be able to target the demographics that they believe will achieve the desired outcome. Obviously this has few exceptions such as targeting cigarettes, alcohol, etc. at minors. Are there any good arguments against this? Of note: The subject of this topic seems a bit biased, why not "Facebook is letting job advertisers target specific genders?"
planb 8y ago
The more I think about this topic, the more I come to the conclusion there is one simple solution to all the targeted-ad related problems - at least from the platforms point of view: Make all data about ads public. Who is targeted, how many people are reached, what other campaigns does a company run on that platform. Let anyone see all the data and then don't blame the platform but the advertiser. Of course this would only work if at least the big ones (Google and Facebook) are be on board. Regulations which force all platforms to publish this data could minimize the competitive disadvantage that would otherwise result from companies wanting to keep this stuff secret and selecting platforms accordingly.
gfiorav 8y ago
What if you want to make two separate ad campaigns? One targeted to men and one to women. This has yielded the best results in a previous company. We hired x5 the women (tech industry) just because we changed the wording a bit.
craig_peacock 8y ago
I bet no one would blink an eye if Facebook allowed targeting jobs to only women. People really need to get over themselves, men and women inherently have different strengths, and so there are just some things that only men should do.
- feanaro 8y ago
  "should"? Men and women have different strengths on average, not on an individual level, so your conclusion that some things should be done by men only is unsound.
  - craig_peacock 8y ago
    To be frank, if I walk into a men's bathroom and there is a woman in there cleaning I am going to be pissed off and feel like my privacy and decency has been violated. So yes, as a quick example I feel very justified in saying that men's bathrooms should ONLY be cleaned by men. There are lots of examples like this but I am too busy to outline each one. Women should NOT be encouraged to think that they are equal to men, they are not and this only breeds conflict and disappointment. I do not have the faculties to be the world's top mathematician, anyone trying to encourage me to achieve this position is setting me up for massive amounts of disappointment and frustration, no one should try to prevent me attempting IF I should want to try, same thing with women, no women should ever be expected or encouraged to excel in the work place, women should be encouraged to be happy at home, there should just never be any laws preventing women from attempting anything they wish.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
peter303 8y ago
Linkedin verses common resume wisdom: In the US the conventional wisdom is you are never supposed to put a self photo in a resume (though that is common in other countries). However in Linkedin you cant achieve top status without a professional headshot. Plus that headshot appears as a thumbnail in many functions of Linkedin. So you are prejudiced by your gender, race and age just like a common Tinder profile.
klosnet 8y ago
Facebook is not a regulatory committee. This entire article is naive and annoying.
yAnonymous 8y ago
When businesses decide they want to hire men, that's the kind of thing you have to deal with on a free market. This is true equality, all things considered. What many people seem to want is forced equality, where they assume that women need an artificial advantage to be on equal terms, which is -you guessed it- discriminatory. I don't see why anyone who seriously supports women's rights would want that and working with women who have earned their spot in the business, I certainly know that they don't want it, because it would devalue their achievements.
amelius 8y ago
Perhaps a silly question but why is gender (and perhaps ethnicity) the only type of discrimination everybody worries about when it comes to Facebook? Shouldn't we extend this to all the ways people differ? For example, why should somebody who loves horse-riding not get the same job offerings as somebody who loves computer-programming, in all cases? And why can employers exclude people who are interested in pregnancy-related things, or people with dangerous hobbies like basejumping? Can't we start a petition for a ban on targeted advertisement, so we can stop this madness altogether? It would also solve a lot of privacy related problems.
amelius 8y ago
Funny thing is, if an employer sets out an advertisement targeted at X, then when you show up at the interview the employer knows X about you, without you being aware of it. (Except of course if X is something obvious like gender).
fjcp 8y ago
And what is wrong? Suppose I have a position already filled by a woman and now, for the sake of diversity, I need to hire a man to balance the world. The real problem here is that some people will always cry and rant, regardless of the situation: - Job ad for women? Sexist! We don't need you to tell us what to do. - Job ad for men? Sexist! We can do that to! - Job ad for both? Sexist! You should prioritize women, we are a minority.
- bobbytherobot 8y ago
  In fields that are dominated by women like teaching, they do target men for jobs. It is publicly known. There are only a handful of fields where women dominate.
  - jamesrcole 8y ago
    > There are only a handful of fields where women dominate. I was curious if I could find some figures, so I did a quick Google search. While I can't vouch for the data used in this article, it seems your statement is incorrect, and quite strongly so https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-percentage-women-and-men-each-profession/GBX22YsWl0XaeHghwXfE4H/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce... It draws data from the U.S. Department of Labor
    - jermaustin1 8y ago
      Not entirely scientific, but the male majority roles took 18 "page ups" to scroll through versus 16 for the female majority roles. A better approach would be to get the full counts of the positions, but that requires more work than the results are probably worth.
GreenToad5 8y ago
It's marketing... demographics matter. Targeted ads are cost effective and efficient. What next? can't target women when advertising feminine products? or men when selling condoms? Are we really this bored to even be discussing this?
- scarface74 8y ago
  There is no slippery slope argument. Restricting discriminatory advertising for jobs and real estate has been established law for decades. Just because it’s “on the internet”, doesn’t make any difference.
DocTomoe 8y ago
... or - most likely - only women.
deaps 8y ago
I find the title a bit misleading - more so puts the blame in the 'wrong' place. Let me explain briefly. Facebook allows advertisers to pay a rate per advertisement displayed. Why shouldn't Facebook 'let' their paying customers show the ads to those they are interested in. AKA why would they pay Facebook to show their ad to people they are not interested in? That being said - I've followed most of the discussion...and there are a lot of strong points. I just think that the title shouldn't that Facebook LET them advertise in a certain way - it should be the company that is advertising the positions only to men - although they certainly could be targeting men through that channel - and targeting women through another channel - with differing types of ads all together.
- nailer 8y ago
  > why would they pay Facebook to show their ad to people they are not interested in? Because not doing so is illegal in most first-world countries.
  - thecopy 8y ago
    What is the legal text supporting this?
    - nailer 8y ago
      There's a lot of countries we're talking about here (and I'm honestly surprised an adult who has hired someone wouldn't be aware) but from a 5 second DuckDuckGo: > The only thing the employer has to do is avoid criteria which touch on race, religion, gender, age or disability. > Allen M., Esq. Attorney
      - thecopy 8y ago
        That quote talks about criteria, not where ads can be placed.
        nailer 8y ago
GhostVII 8y ago
It's interesting that the headline and article seems to be focused on the advertisers targeting ads towards men when there were also instances where the ads were targetted towards only women. Shouldn't those both be equally wrong? And I don't see anything inherently wrong with targeted towards a specific gender so long as that targeted is compensated for elsewhere in your recruiting strategy. Lots of magazines are read by more people of one sex than the other, so if you are recruiting in those magazines, I think it can make sense to make up the difference by using Facebook.
- slivym 8y ago
  Well partly it's neater to write the headline and grab attention, but partly it's because their research seems to be indicating that this is being used to target only men. For example: >Our survey of 91 Uber ads found just one targeting only women; three did not target a specific sex.
sdotcom 8y ago
Absolutely nothing wrong with this. I am pretty much 110% certain that no one is complaining about job advertisers targeting women, so what is the problem? I know it's the 2018 way to feel slighted by everything, but it's getting ridiculous.
ramblerman 8y ago
Did they look at the reverse as well, or would that not be shocking enough? I'd be surprised if there were no companies targeting only women for tampons, various beauty products, breast health.
- lccarrasco 8y ago
  Legally speaking, job ads are not the same as those for consumer products or services.
black6 8y ago
This is the whole point of advertising on Facebag -- targeting a demographic. THIS IS WHAT THEY SELL.
Glyptodon 8y ago
How do places like Tilted Kilt deal with basically only hiring "attractive" women legally?
- sct202 8y ago
  No one's sued them yet. It's kind of like the affirmative action lawsuits, where it's a widespread topic but like only one person is actually pressing the issue in court.
Inception 8y ago
Does this mean they are letting advertisers target only women too?
y3sh 8y ago
At first i thought who cares, but then i saw 300+ comments.
chuckgreenman 8y ago
Do people find jobs through advertisements? I don't think I've ever landed a job that way. It's always been through referral or researching companies that do interesting work and reaching out to the right people there.
- lucaspm98 8y ago
  It certainly works best how you describe it for highly skilled positions in fields that the majority of HN works in. The examples in this article such as trucking are less skilled, lower pay positions in somewhat undesirable roles. Especially in the current job marketplace these employers are desperate to attract candidates.
jeffreyrogers 8y ago
Shouldn't the ad market correct this itself? I'm thinking something like this: 1. If advertisers are targeting men the price for job ads targeting men goes up. 2. Assuming women are as good at men at the job any firm that hires women can now do so more cheaply than its competitors. 3. Firms will realize this and start hiring women by targeting them, which will push the prices towards equilibrium. Maybe that reasoning doesn't work if the cost to target men vs women isn't that different or if companies are only spending a small amount on ads.
RightMillennial 8y ago
Did anything become of the complaint filed by HUD against Facebook for race discriminated housing ads?
_zachs 8y ago
If this headline was changed to "Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Women" this wouldn't be news and it would be hailed as the most progressive move of the century. With that, this isn't news, and definitely doesn't belong on the front page of Hacker News.
itry2develop 8y ago
I bet they also allow targeting of everyone, but straight white men too.
sebleon 8y ago
There's a few reasonable reasons why FB should allow gender-specific job ad campaigns: - Employers will likely see better ROI on their ad-spend by creating separate ad campaigns for every gender, with copy/creatives optimized for the target demo - Employers may see that FB ads are ineffective for a specific gender, eg. fb ads are good for finding male candidates, while other marketing channels (radio, tv ads, etc) work better for female candidates. Given these examples, I wouldn't blame Fb for allowing gender-specific ads. The onus should be on the employer to reach out to candidates of all genders throughout their recruiting campaigns, with gender balance when you aggregate efforts across different mediums.

271 points by danso 8y ago

mesozoic 8y ago

Suprise! When you want to get actual productive results from advertising progressivism ain't so useful.

Endy 8y ago
Surprise! Advertising is evil as an industry and violates the few good pieces of law we have to benefit everyone, not just those in power!

spullara 8y ago

I wonder if job discrimination suits are ever going to be filed against Hollywood. They literally choose employees at a minimum by race, age and gender. Actual skill is the last thing they look at.

mankash666 8y ago

We need to stop treating Facebook or any digital infrastructure as culpable when it's users are the ones responsible. As far as Facebook's concerned, it's an advertiser picking a demographic. I bet they don't know what the ad is about! What next? Hold AT&T culpable for providing internet to these advertisers?

Analemma_ 8y ago
This law is nothing new to digital advertisers. The New York Times is also forbidden by law to advertise job or housing ads that discriminate against protected classes in its classifieds page, and this has been an uncontroversial state of affairs for decades. Facebook is being asked to play by the same rules as everyone else.
mmt 8y ago
> What next? Hold AT&T culpable for providing internet to these advertisers? If AT&T is otherwise interacting with the content (e.g. throttling or zero-rating based on it being an ad), I don't see a problem with that. Traditionally, common carriers were protected under the premise that they didn't discriminate based on content. In this respect, I think internet carriers are putting themselves in a precarious position in not supporting net neutrality. Once a carrier shows that it can (and does) discriminate content, what makes it different from a publisher like a newspaper?
scarface74 8y ago
Facebook is not culpable for what it’s users post. They are just as culpable when they accept money from advertisers as any newspaper would be. Apple for instance would be sued into oblivion if it let anyone post a song for sale on iTunes without any vetting for copyrighted content.

calimac 8y ago

Facebook is not the policemen of the internet. Is it ok for your Tesla to have ludicrous mode? Believe me I have serious issues with zuckbook but their ads platform filtering selects is not an issue. You cannot assume that targeting men automatically means that they are discriminating against women. #FlawedLogic There are circumstances where I would optimize 1 ad for a man and another for a woman to get get better conversion than a general ad but still advertise equally to both genders.

SamReidHughes 8y ago

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18016576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18016576

microcolonel 8y ago

News flash: the titles of these ads are clearly not as likely to be attractive to women as they are to men. If you are completely ignorant of figures and study in this area, it's easy to get incensed over this completely unsurprising, trivial fact. Advertisement and listing are two completely separate matters. If you are trying to convince people to consider your listing, it makes perfect sense to use language (and imagery?) which will be attractive to the demographic it is visible to. The listing isn't somehow less available to people who weren't targeted as effectively by a specific message.

beatpanda 8y ago

This is unambiguously illegal and Facebook could stop doing this anytime it wants. Craigslist reminds its users about anti-discrimination laws before they post and provides a means for users to flag illegal ads.

sneak 8y ago
Right now the targeting information for an ad is not disclosed to the recipient, so it's not possible for an end user to know if a given ad is illegal or not unless there's discriminatory information directly in the copy, which is pretty rare.
- lclarkmichalek 8y ago
  If you click the three dots on the top right of an ad in the newsfeed, you should be able to press 'Why am I seeing this' to see an explanation of the targeting for an ad. I can see one on my newsfeed that says: > One reason you're seeing this ad is that Castore Sportswear wants to reach people who have visited their website or used one of their apps. This is based on customer information provided by Castore Sportswear. > There may be other reasons you're seeing this ad, including that Castore Sportswear wants to reach people ages 18 and older who live in the United Kingdom. This is information based on your Facebook profile and where you've connected to the internet.
oh_sigh 8y ago
Not really, because some jobs are legitimately only available to people a certain gender and so facebook would still need to make a judgement call.
- jazzyjackson 8y ago
  ???? like what?
  - onehedgehog 8y ago
    Is it hard to think of a single job posting that would only be available to only men OR women? Entertainment jobs are especially constrained: Exotic male dancer, exotic female dancer, specific roles in tv/movies/plays, Hooters waitress, etc.

patcheudor 8y ago

Blaming Facebook muddies the water a bit. Ultimately the companies advertising on Facebook broke the law when they checked the wrong boxes. Facebook should; however, make that information public knowledge by allowing the public to see the advertising parameters of any given ad if they are curious but to my knowledge, no law requires it. Maybe it's time to start having a conversation about the need advertising transparency.

mikeash 8y ago
Can this box be checked legally?
- nbar1 8y ago
  Yes, you can advertise to only one sex. The problem is they advertised a job ad.
  - cm2187 8y ago
    Depends on the job. You won’t send a female cleaner in a male locker room. Also some recruiter are explicitely trying to correct a gender imbalance and are therefore actively seeking female candidates. Does that become unethical to advertise to women?
    - LocalPCGuy 8y ago
      That's a bad example. There are many jobs where men clean female locker rooms/restrooms and visa versa. But I agree with others (and I think you) that it isn't Facebook's responsibility legally to ensure it isn't possible for companies to break the law. Might be able to make a moral argument, but that's a different argument.
    - bsder 8y ago
      > Depends on the job. You won’t send a female cleaner in a male locker room. Um, the cleaner is usually coming in when the locker room is empty so sex doesn't matter.

Bucephalus355 8y ago

Marketing segmentation wasn’t really used at all until the mid-70’s to deal with a period declining sales in the US economy. Old people weren’t even treated as a specific segment beyond 65+ until like 1990. A very productive world existed without any significant marketing targeting other than geolocation and some other rough measures. Perhaps we are returning to such a state of things.

tlb 8y ago
The practice goes back much further than that. Consider two popular magazines from 1931: https://archive.org/stream/PopularMechanics1931#page/n9 https://archive.org/stream/PopularMechanics1931#page/n9 https://archive.org/details/TheLadiesHomeJournalV48N12193112 https://archive.org/details/TheLadiesHomeJournalV48N12193112 The ads are not the same due to marketing segmentation.
- sah2ed 8y ago
  Interesting links. For a moment there, I thought the ad by Motor Institute of America shown on the page of Popular Mechanics you linked to, was also present in your second link to the The Ladies Home Journal, albeit with a different ad copy.

patmcc 8y ago

I'm a bit mixed about this; it is clearly discriminatory to publish a job ad that says "women need not apply", but it doesn't feel inherently discriminatory to advertise a job in, say, "Men's Health" but not "Cosmopolitan" magazine. Or to advertise on a particular television channel or program (whose viewers may not match the population at large). That's just how advertising works. Is that crazy? Would this be different if, for example, Facebook was targeting people for job ads based on "people who like action movies" or "people who like romance novels" (I'm stereotyping here, but just assume you pick a category that ends up being a decent proxy for gender)?

meowface 8y ago
Yes, it would be very different. For example, the two things you listed are probably rather bad proxies for gender (even if it's only hypothetical). All they had to do was pick the niche they're going for (which may incidentally turn out to be highly skewed to one gender) rather than making it 100% one gender. I honestly don't even understand the purpose of advertising anything to only men or only women. (The obvious answer would be "sexism", but presumably the advertiser is making some assumption of economic benefit for only targeting one or the other.)
- gascan 8y ago
  I honestly don't even understand the purpose of advertising anything to only men or only women. If you pay per view, it's entirely rational to target towards the demographic that produces the most spend for your ad budget. Why would you waste money advertising, e.g., mascara or sanitary pads to men? Sure, there's probably some infinitesimal fraction of men who would be interested, but targeting them profitably is not a trivial exercise.
  - meowface 8y ago
    In classic rubber duck-debugging style, I ended up realizing that as soon as I pressed submit. In that case I suppose it's not very ethically questionable for things that are very clearly 100% (within a minuscule margin of error) men's only (prostate health, etc.) or women's only (sanitary pads). I guess the real quandary is for stuff that's male-dominated like hard, dangerous physical labor (coal mining etc.), but not 100% men. If a recruiter can statistically prove that the most efficient use of their advertising dollars to hire for a coal mining job is by targeting only men, 1) is it sexist and/or unethical, and 2) should it be legal?

danso 8y ago

I’ve never tried to place a FB ad, so I don’t know what the interface looks like. But wouldn’t it be fairly straightforward on their end to disable gender (or other protected classes) as options for targeting when it comes to job or housing ads? Or are advertisers not required to choose a “category” for their ad, in the way that on Craigslist, you have to select a category to post in? Even if there is no such categorization, it’s not a difficult NLP challenge to detect that the content of an ad is for job hiring, or to know that the advertiser is based in the U.S. FB could implement a warning/reminder dialog similar to how GMail tells you that you haven’t actually included an attachment yet.

contem 8y ago

From the original pitch deck: > thefacebook.com allows for targeted advertisement on the basis of any (or a combination of) the following parameters: > College/University, Sexual Orientation, Degree Type, Zip Code, Concentration, Dating interests, Courses taken, Personal Interests, Class Year, Clubs and Jobs, House/Dormitory, Political Bent, Age, Number of friends, Gender, Site Usage. So blatant targeted advertisement has always been part of Facebook. Lots of (now wealthy) investors and early adopters had no problem that its users were being targeted on the basis of their sexuality. The market will go where it wants to go: Instead of explicitly targeting men, you now target people that liked WWE, Family Guy, study business school, and searched for "hackernews". Or you make the advertisement itself appealing to men (and take the small loss on an irrelevant audience).

PeterisP 8y ago
There's a difference between the types of advertisement. It's okay to target ads based on gender if you're advertising shirts or shampoo or whatever. It's illegal if you're advertising jobs.
- contem 8y ago
  Yeah, there may be a legal difference, and there has to be a point where the majority starts to say: Hey! That's wrong! I think the fundamental difference is null. Or maybe I am just one of the first to start to say: Hey! That's wrong!

Meph504 8y ago

(from another thread very similar to this) I really don't see how the companies placing the ads, aren't going to get hammered for it. But Facebook is doing nothing illegal, unless the ads, were placed for jobs with Facebook. Just as newspaper/radio/tv aren't required not to post job adverts that violate the EEOC's rules. For clarity, According to the EEOC (https://www1.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/index.cfm?renderforprin... https://www1.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/index.cfm?renderforprin...) Recruitment It is also illegal for an employer to recruit new employees in a way that discriminates against them because of their race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information. For example, an employer's reliance on word-of-mouth recruitment by its mostly Hispanic work force may violate the law if the result is that almost all new hires are Hispanic.

scarface74 8y ago
Just as newspaper/radio/tv aren't required not to post job adverts that violate the EEOC's rules. http://panewsmedia.org/legal/legaltopics/legalemployment http://panewsmedia.org/legal/legaltopics/legalemployment
mbrumlow 8y ago
> For example, an employer's reliance on word-of-mouth recruitment by its mostly Hispanic work force may violate the law if the result is that almost all new hires are Hispanic. I think the key here is may. Nothing I have read seems to indicate that targeting men only violates the EEOC rules. The rule only seems to be if the result is almost all new hires are X. What if we had a good pool of men working, and the company was a perfect example of diversity but found that it lacked women needed for a spot to keep their 50/50 ratio. Now let's say they had a lot of qualified men candidates already lined up. Why should the be forced to put ads out for men they know they won't hire because the next 5 hires are going to be women to keep their diversity ratio? Side note (off topic), I was unaware of the EEOC rules on this sort of thing and am a bit shocked knowing that on HN and various places on the internet I have seen people promoting jobs that flat out say "POC or Woman applicants will only be considered". It Think Evergreen and UCLA recently had job postings with this type of wording recently. How is that not a EOC violation?

pteredactyl 8y ago

I don't understand the problem. The flipside would be they're letting Job Advertisers only target women. I wonder what those numbers look like: What percentage of job advertisers only target women? If I'm spending ad dollars, why would I not choose the most effective form of advertising for me? That's not to say they're not hiring women. In which case it'd be more dubious. Last week in the Bay Area I heard a TSA radio advertisement, in which they said, 'women and people of color strongly encouraged to apply.' Imagine the outrage if they had said 'white men strongly encouraged to apply'? All the qualification based on immutable characteristics, versus actual ability to do the job, makes me feel very uneasy.

ALittleLight 8y ago
It's interesting to think about. If I'm looking for someone to ride on a garbage truck, there's probably a 95% chance the future employee will be male, but acting on this expectation, by advertising to men instead of women - getting more employees per dollar spent, is sexist. Likewise, if I needed to hire an au pair I'd have to advertise to men and women equally?
- pteredactyl 8y ago
  I don't think it's sexist to target men for a job posting. You know the job, you know what it entails and you know what works behaviorally and physically. There are differences between genders. That's okay. I do think it's sexist to not hire a qualified women for the job because she's a women ( esp. in the garbage collector scenario). Like you hate women or something and you don't hire them ( funny story I heard a women on the sidewalk casually say she hated men. Never heard a man say that... ) The same for the flipside. I do think it's a sexist double standard to say it's not okay to target men for a job and not mention anything about the flipside: it's okay to only target women.
  - JamisonM 8y ago
    The law says that it is "sexist" (i.e. discrimination) to target advertising in a way that denies qualified women the opportunity to apply for a particular job. In the end the net result of targeting only men is the same as refusing to hire women, it denies otherwise qualified women opportunities that they are deserving of. That this has a cost is understood by those who wrote the law, they decided those costs are worth it.

jtms 8y ago

well guess what... the overwhelming majority of uber drivers ARE men - why would you want to waste your ad spend on a non-productive demo?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Endy 8y ago
Because of the law and the EEOC.
- jtms 8y ago
  Google lets you target male/female demo's and, to my knowledge, always has. Literally every advertiser does this and always has. I am not sure why this article even exists. With demographic targeting in Google Ads, you can reach a specific set of potential customers who are likely to be within a particular age range, gender, parental status, or household income. For instance, if you run a fitness studio exclusively for women, demographic targeting could help you avoid showing your ads to men. https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2580383?co=ADWORDS.IsAWNCustomer%3Dfalse&hl=en https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2580383?co=ADWO...

maerF0x0 8y ago

Another angle on the issue: If some company is doing something that is suboptimal (such as excluding a viable gender employee group) they will eventually be priced out of the market by competitors (because their inefficiencies will remove their competitiveness). I wonder how many of these things we should legislate against the "bad guy" vs. just ensure the proliferation/competitiveness of the "Good guys"?

hyperpape 8y ago
No. http://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/ http://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/
- reversecs 8y ago
  It would be nice if you said what you objected to specifically and describe or specify how the link you've commented adds anything to the discussion.
  - hyperpape 8y ago
    The idea that companies will be forced by the market to correct discrimination is a nice idea in theory, but false. I think it's obviously false, but the article will help someone who likes to question the obvious.
    - zeroname 8y ago
      The whole "priced out of the market" idea is nonsense. That argument isn't even being made by Andreesen here though. The competitive disadvantage is true, by definition. It doesn't make sense to discriminate from a market perspective. The article only supports this: Greenspan got a competitive advantage by hiring women, because they were cheaper. The free market punishes discrimination. It doesn't end discrimination, but it gives an incentive for hiring women. If I identified as a woman, I frankly wouldn't be so worried about earning a bit less than my male counterparts, but rather about not being hired at all, because of all the legal risks associated with hiring women because of anti-discrimination laws. Nobody is getting sued for discrimination about firing some white boy.

kakarot 8y ago

This is a situation where you must ask yourself the very difficult question of what is more important, individual freedom or equality? I think it goes beyond egalitarianism, because I certainly think any female who wants to become a highly-paid programmer should be able to do so simply by building merit, without any additional barriers. I also think that any person, male or female, has the right to decide what demographics their private company is composed of. The extreme of this, a world where all high-paying jobs are dished out by misogynists, is definitely a problem that needs to be solved, but I don't think we are actually living in that world currently.

Endy 8y ago
To paraphrase Judge Dredd on this one, The Law is what's most important. The law is written to oppose injustice and as part of doing so, inequity Follow the law. Work to have it changed if you think your public persona can survive fighting the EEOC's existence and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But follow the law first whether you like it or not, whether it's "profitable" or not.
PeterisP 8y ago
Yes, it surely is a situation where this question should be asked, however the question has been asked and "we the people" have decided (and written into law) that in this type of scenarios equality overrides individual freedom. In particular, it's been decided that in many cases (IIRC it starts to apply if the company has more than 15 employees) any person, male or female, does not have the right to decide what demographics their private company is composed of. That's it. This is the similar to "the right to swing your fist ends at my nose"; there is an inherent conflict between ability to choose demographics in your company and the ability of all demographics to get a fair job, we can't have both. We considered that this is a problem that needs to be solved and that such restrictions are going to be (part of) a solution. We may make different choices in future, but that's the one we currently have.
- kakarot 8y ago
  > the right to swing your fist ends at my nose It isn't really fair to compare this to that. One is a clear case of one's freedom interfering on the freedom or safety of another. I don't think this situation is nearly that black and white.

spullara 8y ago

What if Facebook's algorithm determined that women weren't interested and stopped serving it to them automatically?

anticensor 8y ago
This is not a problem. It would be illegal if it was not served in the beginning.

yesenadam 8y ago

I once applied for a job as a porn actor (at a flatmate's joking suggestion). They replied saying they only wanted women, but weren't allowed to say that in the ad. That seemed a silly waste of time.

hyperpape 8y ago
As other comments in the thread make clear, they didn't understand the law.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  I'm in Australia. I'm don't know what the law is here, I guess what they said it was.

hajile 8y ago

I see a bunch of claims, but is this actually illegal in the US? More specifically, is it illegal to selectively advertise a job provided that the business doesn't profile during actual hiring? If I post job listings in upper-class white neighborhoods only, would that be illegal? What if I had one ad that targeted men and another which targeted women? What if the male version was designed to be successful while the female version was designed to discourage response?

PeterisP 8y ago
Yes, USA laws require that jobs be advertised on a nondiscriminatory basis. https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/index.cfm https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/index.cfm is a decent summary. All the examples you provide would be illegal. As the provided example states "For example, an employer's reliance on word-of-mouth recruitment by its mostly Hispanic work force may violate the law if the result is that almost all new hires are Hispanic."
matz1 8y ago
Unfortunately yes, the descrimination law in the US is ridiculous and complicated.

SenseiMaster 8y ago

Is this different from software companies specifically targeting women and certain races? Some companies even have specific internships that are dedicated to women and certain races. When software companies do that, it's usually seen as a "legitimate" way to increase the number of certain gender and races at the company.

cbovis 8y ago

On the fence about this one. Whilst targeting individual groups can certainly lead to inequalities there is the problem of tailoring ads to an audience. One way a company may wish to make their ads more appealing is by showing relatable people in adverts. If a company is running two variations of the same job advert, one featuring women and one featuring men, distributing coverage across the two variations evenly, then is there still an issue? I would argue not, yet introducing a non-gender targeting rule would make this impossible to do and could in fact have the opposite affect to what was desired by the regulation.

scarface74 8y ago
Yes it would still be a problem. I can’t speak for job postings but I can speak for real estate. There are certain things that you are not allowed to say in advertisement or as a real estate agent. Even in jobs, you would be walking a very fine line if an obviously pregnant woman walked in and you started mentioning that the place you work is great for mothers.
- bagacrap 8y ago
  Could you elaborate on what line that is? How would you go slightly farther and cross it?
  - scarface74 8y ago
    I don’t think it’s prima facie illegal to mention that, but it does open you up to a discrimination lawsuit. The chances of winning might be slim, but why take the chance? Crossing the line would be “This job requires a lot of travel,are you sure you could handle it with a newborn?”
- commandlinefan 8y ago
  This sort of thing ought to disturb more people than it seems to - it should be really, really obvious when you're breaking the law, and it should be something that you can only do with actual harmful intent. This sort of thing goes a step worse, though, and actually makes _good_ intent unlawful.

gehwartzen 8y ago

For those interested here is a link to The Code of Federal Regulations: Title 29 (Labor): Part 1604 “Guidelines On Discrimination Because of Sex” which describes the relevant legal requirements/interpretations pertaining to employer sex discrimination. https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2011-title29-vol4/xml/CFR-2011-title29-vol4-part1604.xml https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2011-title29-vol4/xml/CFR-...

zeroname 8y ago
" § 1604.5 Job opportunities advertising. It is a violation of title VII for a help-wanted advertisement to indicate a preference, limitation, specification, or discrimination based on sex unless sex is a bona fide occupational qualification for the particular job involved. The placement of an advertisement in columns classified by publishers on the basis of sex, such as columns headed “Male” or “Female,” will be considered an expression of a preference, limitation, specification, or discrimination based on sex." Seems to me like they're legally in the clear, as long as the ad itself doesn't contain any indication. Same as only advertising in a publication whose readers are 99% male - Google's gender metrics aren't even that precise.
- sievebrain 8y ago
  This does imply the TSA are breaking the law given the story above about how they "strongly encourage" women to apply.
  - Cthulhu_ 8y ago
    I'm sure there's a team of lawyers that pored over the exact language used and made sure it skirts the laws; they say "we strongly encourage", not "we prefer".
    - sievebrain 8y ago
      They're equivalent. People strongly encourage things they prefer. It would be a very Kafkaesque judgement that one can strongly encourage a certain gender to apply and not violate that statute. Of course, it's also the outcome I'd expect, but biased application of the law is a separate issue.

j16sdiz 8y ago

I think the problem is with the employer, not the platform. I don't understand why Facebook should be blamed here. How is it possible for a global platform cater each and every local custom?

aikah 8y ago
> I think the problem is with the employer, not the platform No, the platform gives the tools to specifically filter by sex. Facebook is enabling sexual discrimination. > every local custom euphemism You mean the law, the very thing that will get your in legal troubles if you break it. I'm pretty sure it's illegal to discriminate by sex when it comes to employment in US, and Facebook is an american company.
- zeroname 8y ago
  > No, the platform gives the tools to specifically filter by sex. Facebook is enabling sexual discrimination. Like any ad seller, Facebook offers displaying ads based on demographics. This is a basic requirement for many advertisers, because a lot of products happen to be bought exclusively by one gender. You have a right to buy tampons, you don't have a right to be displayed advertisements for tampons. Even if there were legal problems with those particular Uber ads, it's Uber's responsibility to follow the law, it's not Facebooks responsibility to screen every ad for possible infringements.
  - Endy 8y ago
    I disagree. If they know they are hosting employment ads, they need to be required to perform to legal standards. That means that, minimum, an employment ad should be seen differently than a regular ad by the algorithm and by the backend - no demographic weighting can be allowed within the protected classes; unless the employer applies for a BFOQ, makes it clear what that BFOQ is, and has it authorized by either an EEOC rep or an employment law professional within the ad platform (in this case Facebook). Otherwise they're clearly in violation of the law and knowingly so.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

root_axis 8y ago

It is unimaginable to me that Facebook or any company should ever be obligated to show ads to anyone for any reason. Don't use Facebook as a job search platform. Facebook is just a website, you don't have to use it for everything. The fact that some people are not receiving ads on Facebook, in any sane world, has got to be the sole prerogative of Facebook. Nobody pays money to receive ads on Facebook, there is nothing to lose by just uninstalling the app. Facebook should offer a "Premium Ads" program where you pay a monthly subscription to see all the ads discriminatory advertisers weren't willing to show you on their own dime!

horsecaptin 8y ago

Does this mean that any company that targets an ad to men / women only on social media platforms can be sued for discrimination?

Endy 8y ago
No, this is specific to employment law. You can advertise products or services to whomever you wish. Employment must have equal opportunity.
- horsecaptin 8y ago
  I mistyped. I meant targets a gender for employment.
PeterisP 8y ago
No, there are a bunch of areas that have specific laws prohibiting gender discrimination. Employment is one of them, housing and credit also have similar laws, but not most consumer goods and services.

zonidjan 8y ago

Funny thing: it's not illegal to only hire men. Just like Hooter's would never hire a (male) waiter.

Endy 8y ago
Hooter's gets in with a loophole. Their waitresses are technically "entertainers", which means that their cup size could actually be considered a BFOQ. It's a weird middle space that exists because Congress in the '60s was concerned about Hollywood and Broadway.

zonidjan 8y ago

The most prominent organization named is Uber, who it's safe to assume is running multiple ad's at a time, which probably includes some targeted at men and some targeted at women (even if it's as simple as changing out the stock photo). Oh, and "The Pennsylvania State Police, for example, boosted a post targeted to men ..." well of course, why would they pay to advertise to females when they don't need to? You should go research the demographics of police (or visit your local donut shop): almost exclusively male, because most females don't want to do it. And if a female does want to... well, then she should go apply?

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
> almost exclusively male, because most females don't want to do it. Needless generalization; in the less violent Netherlands, there's plenty of women in law enforcement, and you often see both men and women together patrolling. They are actively hired because they bring different traits to the table to de-escalate a situation. Of course, the US is much different, much more violent, much less safe for police, and it's a self-reinforcing system.

vorticalbox 8y ago

I don't think this article have gain as much traction if the title read "Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Women"

Endy 8y ago
I sincerely hope you are wrong, even if I understand your point. On the other hand, the case would still be just as open-and-shut. Violating both the law and EEOC regulation doesn't matter if you're doing it for one side or the other. Unless you can prove that sex is a BFOQ, you are not allowed to recruit or advertise in a way that weights the job on one side of the scale or the other.

lawnchair_larry 8y ago

What if employers create a different ad for men and for women, targeting both, but appealing to the target more effectively? It's often cited that the wording of a neutral sounding job ad can have a huge effect on the percentage of women that will apply. There's nothing illegal about what facebook is doing, although there is potential for misuse.

jsonne 8y ago

Just as an FYI, in the past few hours there have been reports on some big Facebook advertising groups people are getting notifications about their anti-discrimination policies regarding jobs. As a matter of fact, they've, for a while, had an extra step for advertisers to verify they're in compliance for housing, lending, and career opportunities.

mbrumlow 8y ago

Not that I agree or disagree with the practice I can't help to see how people are so quick to want to talk about limiting what looks very much like free speech. If I wanted to spread a message person to person on the street. I think I would find it odd if the government had a say in who I told the message to. All this seems to be I'd a automated system of doing just that. So if I knew of a job at company X and I decided to tell my buddy John (cis gender male) but did not tell Jenny (cis grander female) would I be breaking any sort of rule? Or would I be forced to always find at lest one person of the opposite gender to also inform of the job? In any case why do we care what Facebook is doing. They are simply a tool. U less you are suggesting that advertisers should not be able to do anything based off gender...

basicplus2 8y ago

Its a bit silly to expect companies like facebook do the job of police or a government regulator.

Sol- 8y ago

Even if they remove the explicit gender category in their advertising interface, it seems relatively trivial to find proxies for gender (or race, or age, for that matter) to target a specific subgroup of people with your ads. It's possible to algorithmically bias the ad-targeting algorithms in such a way to achieve parity in whatever sensitive attribute you are concerned about, but that will come at the expense of utility of the targeting (since you will have to show it to more people who you actually don't want to target, just to achieve gender/race/age equality) - of course, that might not be so bad if your hypothesis is that the advertiser has a bad mental model of his target group to begin with and you think that Facebook should force him to make it more egalitarian. I don't think that will happen though, Facebook might remove explicit gender targeting, but I doubt it will do much to help with biased ads since people will just use proxies for gender etc. instead.

jokoon 8y ago

Politics, statistics and stereotypes have a reality. Sometimes you don't want to be politically correct, and you go along with what things actually are, what people want and what is already working. A company is not there to solve stereotypes. Just look at the proportion of women who can read code, or are actually interested in dealing with code. That's an issue. Same thing goes for people who do construction work, miners, the military, etc. I totally admit that it's a cynical opinion. There's are a lot of things civilization can do to define what humans do and how they behave. Gender might have deep implications, that cannot be changed by civilization and principles of equality.

sgift 8y ago
> A company is not there to solve stereotypes. That ties into the question if companies should have a responsibility to society or just be a vehicle to make money. Opinions differ on this. (Legality is another topic, but for the sake of this thread I propose to assume that this behavior is legal)
- rspeer 8y ago
  For the sake of the thread, you could read the article or have some awareness of the topic instead of assuming. > “The ads themselves are illegal,” Galen Sherwin, an ACLU lawyer, said. “It’s been established for five decades.”
  - sgift 8y ago
    For the sake of the thread you could read the other comment threads and see that the "it is illegal" comment chain was already discussed. But then you'd have to use your brain and couldn't just try a "Hurty durty, you didn't read the article" snipe, right? And yes. People like you make me angry.
- PeterisP 8y ago
  "for the sake of this thread I propose to assume that this behavior is legal" - it's not, in USA it's illegal to discriminate genders and some other groups in certain types of advertising (jobs and IIRC housing).

radoslawc 8y ago

Out of curiosity, can anyone post screenshot for this form to choose targeted demographics for Facebook's ads?

King-Aaron 8y ago

So the argument, as I see it here, is that companies should be forced to spend additional resources advertising to demographics that they have identified as not strong leads in their campaigns, so that overly virtuous people can feel happy about them spending money on something that likely won't concern them in the slightest. Righto. If the article's title was "Facebook is letting job advertisers target only women" or "Facebook is letting job advertisers target only people in their ideal demographic", I wonder if the discussion would be any different here.

Endy 8y ago
It has nothing to do with virtue, it's a matter of Facebook and its advertisers violating the written law. EEOC exists due to law, and all employers are required to abide by it. If you violate equal opportunity employment by discriminating for any one of a number of protected classes, you are acting unlawfully. Facebook should not be so openly allowed to violate the law, and for doing so, the individuals in the corporation as well as the corp itself should be charged with their crimes and assessed fines.
- rimliu 8y ago
  Facebook does not employ anyone here, it's about ads.
  - Endy 8y ago
    If you allow an unlawful ad to exist on your platform, you are knowingly violating the law and should be punished.
    - King-Aaron 8y ago
      So if I were to say, "Hey guys, you can get two ounces of pure, uncut cocaine right here, right now... Just send me cash via PayPal and I'll post it to you today!" and no HN moderator removes this comment, then I have posted an unlawful advertisement on HN. By your standing, the operators are now violating the law as soon as a moderator glances across this shitpost, and would require punishment. While that's clearly a ridiculous thing at face value - and I am likely coming across as obtuse by mentioning it - it highlights just what's wrong with your position I feel. I would consider it unrealistic to expect a large-scale content platform like facebook to be liable for individual ads. (Perhaps they could be proactive in reporting offenders to the correct authorities, but a knee-jerk punishment doesn't seem appropriate to me).

hazbo 8y ago

I came across this tweet[0] the other day and in the replies there seemed to be many discussions sparked around the legalities of advertising / hiring based on immutable traits. From what I could gather (not a lawyer) based on what laws people were citing, is that it's "okay" to advertise in this manor, however it is not legal to actually make the hire taking into account these traits. In the case of this tweet, I'm not sure how I feel about this, as it's clear what their goal is: > empower and train black Computer Science students to land their first job which seems fine. However this goal can't be achieved if a white person ends up being hired. So does the ad imply that they will only hire a black computer science student? It seems like a bit of a grey area to me. And while I understand the article linked is about targeting only men for jobs and not for people of colour, they are similar on the basis that it is traits we have no control over. One other point I'd like to make here, is that IF people see this as Facebook "allowing" to filter by immutable traits, in this case Twitter is essentially doing the same, by allowing these kinds of posts. I'd love to hear people's thoughts on this. [0]: https://twitter.com/ryancarson/status/1039624079060267008 https://twitter.com/ryancarson/status/1039624079060267008

d--b 8y ago

People here need to be reminded that a job ad is not the same as a product ad. A job is what you do with your life, not some stuff you may want to buy. Society tells you: you should get a career and climb up the social ladder. Don't worry, every one has the same chances. But then the same society goes around your back and only tells your male friends that there may be an opportunity here or there? wtf? If I was a female developer, or a male nurse, I'd be fucking furious to know that this was happening. There are definitely some jobs that require the person to be male or female, or white, or jewish, or old, whatever. But that's not the norm. Whether or not it is a Facebook duty to remove the box is debatable, but if you are a recruiter and you tick the male box, you're clearly open to lawsuits.

dangerface 8y ago

It also lets you target only women, but thats fine...

jexah 8y ago

In the following, I assume either pay-per-impression, or pay-per-click with a limited pool size (ex. 500 views limit per day). In the former I assume the "cost" is monetary, in the latter I assume the "cost" is temporal. Genuinely curious about this, what if somebody is posting an ad for hiring labourers (brick layers, etc.)? Do they pay the cost by also targeting women? What about targeting ads for hiring beauticians at females? Is that wrong? Should the company pay the cost to also advertise to men in the off-chance that they catch one of the very few male beauticians? To me it makes sense that advertisers, regardless of what they are advertising (job, product, service, etc.) should be able to target the demographics that they believe will achieve the desired outcome. Obviously this has few exceptions such as targeting cigarettes, alcohol, etc. at minors. Are there any good arguments against this? Of note: The subject of this topic seems a bit biased, why not "Facebook is letting job advertisers target specific genders?"

planb 8y ago

The more I think about this topic, the more I come to the conclusion there is one simple solution to all the targeted-ad related problems - at least from the platforms point of view: Make all data about ads public. Who is targeted, how many people are reached, what other campaigns does a company run on that platform. Let anyone see all the data and then don't blame the platform but the advertiser. Of course this would only work if at least the big ones (Google and Facebook) are be on board. Regulations which force all platforms to publish this data could minimize the competitive disadvantage that would otherwise result from companies wanting to keep this stuff secret and selecting platforms accordingly.

gfiorav 8y ago

What if you want to make two separate ad campaigns? One targeted to men and one to women. This has yielded the best results in a previous company. We hired x5 the women (tech industry) just because we changed the wording a bit.

craig_peacock 8y ago

I bet no one would blink an eye if Facebook allowed targeting jobs to only women. People really need to get over themselves, men and women inherently have different strengths, and so there are just some things that only men should do.

feanaro 8y ago
"should"? Men and women have different strengths on average, not on an individual level, so your conclusion that some things should be done by men only is unsound.
- craig_peacock 8y ago
  To be frank, if I walk into a men's bathroom and there is a woman in there cleaning I am going to be pissed off and feel like my privacy and decency has been violated. So yes, as a quick example I feel very justified in saying that men's bathrooms should ONLY be cleaned by men. There are lots of examples like this but I am too busy to outline each one. Women should NOT be encouraged to think that they are equal to men, they are not and this only breeds conflict and disappointment. I do not have the faculties to be the world's top mathematician, anyone trying to encourage me to achieve this position is setting me up for massive amounts of disappointment and frustration, no one should try to prevent me attempting IF I should want to try, same thing with women, no women should ever be expected or encouraged to excel in the work place, women should be encouraged to be happy at home, there should just never be any laws preventing women from attempting anything they wish.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

peter303 8y ago

Linkedin verses common resume wisdom: In the US the conventional wisdom is you are never supposed to put a self photo in a resume (though that is common in other countries). However in Linkedin you cant achieve top status without a professional headshot. Plus that headshot appears as a thumbnail in many functions of Linkedin. So you are prejudiced by your gender, race and age just like a common Tinder profile.

klosnet 8y ago

Facebook is not a regulatory committee. This entire article is naive and annoying.

yAnonymous 8y ago

When businesses decide they want to hire men, that's the kind of thing you have to deal with on a free market. This is true equality, all things considered. What many people seem to want is forced equality, where they assume that women need an artificial advantage to be on equal terms, which is -you guessed it- discriminatory. I don't see why anyone who seriously supports women's rights would want that and working with women who have earned their spot in the business, I certainly know that they don't want it, because it would devalue their achievements.

amelius 8y ago

Perhaps a silly question but why is gender (and perhaps ethnicity) the only type of discrimination everybody worries about when it comes to Facebook? Shouldn't we extend this to all the ways people differ? For example, why should somebody who loves horse-riding not get the same job offerings as somebody who loves computer-programming, in all cases? And why can employers exclude people who are interested in pregnancy-related things, or people with dangerous hobbies like basejumping? Can't we start a petition for a ban on targeted advertisement, so we can stop this madness altogether? It would also solve a lot of privacy related problems.

amelius 8y ago

Funny thing is, if an employer sets out an advertisement targeted at X, then when you show up at the interview the employer knows X about you, without you being aware of it. (Except of course if X is something obvious like gender).

fjcp 8y ago

And what is wrong? Suppose I have a position already filled by a woman and now, for the sake of diversity, I need to hire a man to balance the world. The real problem here is that some people will always cry and rant, regardless of the situation: - Job ad for women? Sexist! We don't need you to tell us what to do. - Job ad for men? Sexist! We can do that to! - Job ad for both? Sexist! You should prioritize women, we are a minority.

bobbytherobot 8y ago
In fields that are dominated by women like teaching, they do target men for jobs. It is publicly known. There are only a handful of fields where women dominate.
- jamesrcole 8y ago
  > There are only a handful of fields where women dominate. I was curious if I could find some figures, so I did a quick Google search. While I can't vouch for the data used in this article, it seems your statement is incorrect, and quite strongly so https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-percentage-women-and-men-each-profession/GBX22YsWl0XaeHghwXfE4H/story.html https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-perce... It draws data from the U.S. Department of Labor
  - jermaustin1 8y ago
    Not entirely scientific, but the male majority roles took 18 "page ups" to scroll through versus 16 for the female majority roles. A better approach would be to get the full counts of the positions, but that requires more work than the results are probably worth.

GreenToad5 8y ago

It's marketing... demographics matter. Targeted ads are cost effective and efficient. What next? can't target women when advertising feminine products? or men when selling condoms? Are we really this bored to even be discussing this?

scarface74 8y ago
There is no slippery slope argument. Restricting discriminatory advertising for jobs and real estate has been established law for decades. Just because it’s “on the internet”, doesn’t make any difference.

DocTomoe 8y ago

... or - most likely - only women.

deaps 8y ago

I find the title a bit misleading - more so puts the blame in the 'wrong' place. Let me explain briefly. Facebook allows advertisers to pay a rate per advertisement displayed. Why shouldn't Facebook 'let' their paying customers show the ads to those they are interested in. AKA why would they pay Facebook to show their ad to people they are not interested in? That being said - I've followed most of the discussion...and there are a lot of strong points. I just think that the title shouldn't that Facebook LET them advertise in a certain way - it should be the company that is advertising the positions only to men - although they certainly could be targeting men through that channel - and targeting women through another channel - with differing types of ads all together.

nailer 8y ago
> why would they pay Facebook to show their ad to people they are not interested in? Because not doing so is illegal in most first-world countries.
- thecopy 8y ago
  What is the legal text supporting this?
  - nailer 8y ago
    There's a lot of countries we're talking about here (and I'm honestly surprised an adult who has hired someone wouldn't be aware) but from a 5 second DuckDuckGo: > The only thing the employer has to do is avoid criteria which touch on race, religion, gender, age or disability. > Allen M., Esq. Attorney
    - thecopy 8y ago
      That quote talks about criteria, not where ads can be placed.
      - nailer 8y ago

GhostVII 8y ago

It's interesting that the headline and article seems to be focused on the advertisers targeting ads towards men when there were also instances where the ads were targetted towards only women. Shouldn't those both be equally wrong? And I don't see anything inherently wrong with targeted towards a specific gender so long as that targeted is compensated for elsewhere in your recruiting strategy. Lots of magazines are read by more people of one sex than the other, so if you are recruiting in those magazines, I think it can make sense to make up the difference by using Facebook.

slivym 8y ago
Well partly it's neater to write the headline and grab attention, but partly it's because their research seems to be indicating that this is being used to target only men. For example: >Our survey of 91 Uber ads found just one targeting only women; three did not target a specific sex.

sdotcom 8y ago

Absolutely nothing wrong with this. I am pretty much 110% certain that no one is complaining about job advertisers targeting women, so what is the problem? I know it's the 2018 way to feel slighted by everything, but it's getting ridiculous.

ramblerman 8y ago

Did they look at the reverse as well, or would that not be shocking enough? I'd be surprised if there were no companies targeting only women for tampons, various beauty products, breast health.

lccarrasco 8y ago
Legally speaking, job ads are not the same as those for consumer products or services.

black6 8y ago

This is the whole point of advertising on Facebag -- targeting a demographic. THIS IS WHAT THEY SELL.

Glyptodon 8y ago

How do places like Tilted Kilt deal with basically only hiring "attractive" women legally?

sct202 8y ago
No one's sued them yet. It's kind of like the affirmative action lawsuits, where it's a widespread topic but like only one person is actually pressing the issue in court.

Inception 8y ago

Does this mean they are letting advertisers target only women too?

y3sh 8y ago

At first i thought who cares, but then i saw 300+ comments.

chuckgreenman 8y ago

Do people find jobs through advertisements? I don't think I've ever landed a job that way. It's always been through referral or researching companies that do interesting work and reaching out to the right people there.

lucaspm98 8y ago
It certainly works best how you describe it for highly skilled positions in fields that the majority of HN works in. The examples in this article such as trucking are less skilled, lower pay positions in somewhat undesirable roles. Especially in the current job marketplace these employers are desperate to attract candidates.

jeffreyrogers 8y ago

Shouldn't the ad market correct this itself? I'm thinking something like this: 1. If advertisers are targeting men the price for job ads targeting men goes up. 2. Assuming women are as good at men at the job any firm that hires women can now do so more cheaply than its competitors. 3. Firms will realize this and start hiring women by targeting them, which will push the prices towards equilibrium. Maybe that reasoning doesn't work if the cost to target men vs women isn't that different or if companies are only spending a small amount on ads.

RightMillennial 8y ago

Did anything become of the complaint filed by HUD against Facebook for race discriminated housing ads?

_zachs 8y ago

If this headline was changed to "Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Women" this wouldn't be news and it would be hailed as the most progressive move of the century. With that, this isn't news, and definitely doesn't belong on the front page of Hacker News.

itry2develop 8y ago

I bet they also allow targeting of everyone, but straight white men too.

sebleon 8y ago

There's a few reasonable reasons why FB should allow gender-specific job ad campaigns: - Employers will likely see better ROI on their ad-spend by creating separate ad campaigns for every gender, with copy/creatives optimized for the target demo - Employers may see that FB ads are ineffective for a specific gender, eg. fb ads are good for finding male candidates, while other marketing channels (radio, tv ads, etc) work better for female candidates. Given these examples, I wouldn't blame Fb for allowing gender-specific ads. The onus should be on the employer to reach out to candidates of all genders throughout their recruiting campaigns, with gender balance when you aggregate efforts across different mediums.