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> The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights said in a February 18 decision that Facebook’s algorithm reinforced gender stereotypes by mainly showing “typically

> The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights said in a February 18 decision that Facebook’s algorithm reinforced gender stereotypes by mainly showing “typically female professions” to female Facebook users in the Netherlands and that Meta (META), the social platform’s owner, should have monitored and adjusted its algorithm to prevent that. > For example, ads for mechanic positions were predominantly shown to men, while those for preschool teacher roles were primarily directed to women. Global Witness said its experiments in the Netherlands, France, India, Ireland, the United Kingdom and South Africa demonstrated that the algorithm perpetuated similar biases around the world. The non-profit’s investigation led to four complaints from the Dutch human rights group Bureau Clara Wichmann and the French organization Fondation des Femmes. I don't think any of this should be illegal. I don't think anyone is meaningfully harmed by being algorithmically shown job ads stereotypical of one gender rather than another, and I have no problem with any organization at all that does this, whether it's Meta or anyone else. I do not agree with the position of any of these European human rights organizations, and I'd probably be in favor of reforming French anti-discrimination law to explicitly legalize what Meta is doing here.

paperhatwriter 1y ago
Can you explain why you think this?
- cm2012 1y ago
  The algorithm is responding to people's revealed preferences in what job ads they want to see
  - hydrogen7800 1y ago
    All discrimination can be described as "revealed preference". A very convenient way of ignoring systemic harm.
    - fastball 1y ago
      The onus needs to be on convincingly demonstrating the alleged systemic harm. Until then, "revealed preference" seems more appropriate.
      - hydrogen7800 1y ago
        Are you saying the harm from gender-based employment discrimination needs to be demonstrated, or that harm from facebook's permitting of that discrimination needs to be demonstrated?
        rpdillon 1y ago
        You're begging the question. The challenge is to compel belief that unequal gender distribution across professions creates a systemic harm.
    - billy99k 1y ago
      If a company gets 0% response from a certain group, why should they have to pay for ads, when the likelihood they will find a candidate is next to nothing? This also only ever goes in one direction. A friend of mine works for a company run by and employs 100% women. In any other context, it would be illegal. Instead, it's considered 'diverse' and 'empowering'. Based on statistics alone, it's obvious the company is hiring women based on choice. Tech companies, like Duo, touted the fact that they had all women development teams a few years back. When discrimination like this is an accepted practice, I stop listening.
      - handoflixue 1y ago
        Maybe Tech companies like Duo are just running gendered job ads, and that's why men aren't applying - they never see the ads. By your logic, that would be totally acceptable, right?
    - inglor_cz 1y ago
      You can always claim harm, but proving it is a different story. Policies like that are based on results of psychological research such as "stereotype threat", which has recently fallen victim to the reproducibility crisis. In other words, the entire social engineering structure of such laws may be a house built on sand.
  - wiseowise 1y ago
    How far are you willing to stretch this? What about skin color? Nationality? Religion?
    - mustyoshi 1y ago
      Not the guy you're responding to but I'm not going to willingly pay money for pork rind ads to be shown to Muslims. In fact I'd go so far as to suggest that should be illegal as a hate crime.
      - JuniperMesos 1y ago
        Under that legal regime I could imagine Meta being simultaneously sued by one group of people for not discriminating enough on one demographic category, and by another group of people for discriminating too much along a different category. And this ultimately why I would like to see these kinds of laws repealed completely.
      - em-bee 1y ago
        only if the ads are targeted specifically at muslims. otherwise such ads would be offensive even if posted on streets in cities where muslims live.
    - nkmnz 1y ago
      So if I advertise my golfing equipment only in golf clubs, and golf clubs happen to be predominantly visited by old white men, am I discriminating against the young, against women, and against people of color?
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - handoflixue 1y ago
        There's a big difference between first-order and second-order effects. If you explicitly check the box that says "show this job only to old white men" then we can prove your intent was to discriminate. If you advertise at a golf club, we have no such proof. Also, unless the golf club is discriminating, female golfers are just as able to see the ad -vs- male golfers.
  - flir 1y ago
    I'd bet a chunk of cash that it's segmenting people, at least initially. And the "gender A" segment are seeing the ads that are popular with the "gender B" segment at a far lower rate, or not at all. So it's not an individual's revealed preferences, it's a group's revealed preferences. And that's where the discrimination comes in.
- mrighele 1y ago
  Not op, but if I was paying for ads on a platform, I want to make the best use of my money, and target users that may more likely react positively. If this means that ads looking for mechanics are more likely to be seen by men, so be it, why should I show them to somebody not interested ? Unless somebody says explicitly "no women", there is no discrimination in my opinion.
  - a4isms 1y ago
    Reminds me of an old argument that if I'm running a restaurant, and if customers don't want to be served by coloured people or homosexuals, I shouldn't have to hire them. It's bad for business, what other reason do I need? At some point, we have to face the fact that there are two kinds of freedom: The freedom TO something-or-other, and the freedom FROM something-or-other. And the two are often in tension, requiring actual judgment calls and weighing of values, because there is no one perfectly crafted set of objective rules to sort that mess out. Some people care about the freedom from algorithms not showing them ads for jobs they are qualified to do and pay better, but the companies would prefer the freedom TO primarily hire whomever they please and advertise to whomever they please. Those two freedoms are in tension. If the freedom from gender discrimination in the marketplace freedom doesn't matter to you, or matters les than the freedom for someone else TO advertise only to men, well, I can see that you are consistent in your beliefs of things I deeply disagree with.
  - torben-friis 1y ago
    >why should I show them to somebody not interested ? Because interaction goes both ways. A big influencer on women not being interested could be a societal expectation that is not a job for them, which you’re unknowingly reinforcing. This is particularly important when it’s not “mechanic jobs” but “senior jobs” for example. Only male workers being “proposed” leadership positions over time leads to a statistically significant imbalance.
  - IanCal 1y ago
    That’s a pretty simple rule but allows lots of deliberate ways to significantly reduce one group. You have however written a thing here that’s fine - it’s totally fine if your advert is seen more by men. But what you want, and what we as a society generally want, is for those ads to be shown to likely candidates regardless of gender. Given two equally qualified people, do you want your ads to only be shown to one of them, because the other is a woman? I assume not because you want to hire th best person not the best man. The issue isn’t that the ads are shown to more men because they target things like “has said they have worked as a mechanic and are looking for a job” and that happens to be more for men, the accusations is that Facebook is specifically using your gender to determine what job adverts to show you.
- potatoproduct 1y ago
  To ban this would mean in principle you need to ban any kind of algorithm that uses user and/or activity data for any platform. Ie. No content recommendations on reddit, tikok, facebook, youtube, amazon, twiter, etc.
- tmoertel 1y ago
  Not the OP, but: This is actually a thorny problem. Say you have an advertising system that knows nothing about a user’s gender. This system, by construction, cannot vary its ad selections based on gender. But the system does remember whether users have expressed interest in the ads it has previously shown them. Now say you have a job that in general appeals to one gender almost exclusively. The system will, given time, learn which users are interested in ads for this job. Those users will just happen to be almost exclusively of one gender. If the ad system stops showing ads for this job to the users who have demonstrated they don’t want to see them, is that gender discrimination? One can make an argument either way. But either way, it’s not going to be a clear-cut argument. There’s some subtlety required.
  - rowanG077 1y ago
    Taken to its logical conclusion you essentially have to make targeted ads illegal. Now it's gender, next it's race, then it's socioeconomic standing. Then it's age. Etc etc.
    - em-bee 1y ago
      for job ads that is exactly right. discrimination in hiring is already illegal, and therefore logically targeted jobs ads are illegal too.
    - Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
      I think making targeted ads illegal is a great idea all by itself. It would kneecap the entire surveillance and data industry built around tracking people for f**g ads. The gov will still track you though, but that's a different nut to crack.
      - Ekaros 1y ago
        I wonder if this should also apply to more traditional areas. Say TV and magazines. So advertisers should not be able to choose which demographics they target via proxy. That is you should not be able to choose say magazine or tv slot based on demographics.
onraglanroad 1y ago
Well I don't really care what you think or agree with and I'm quite happy to see Meta reprimanded. Since all you offered were your feelings, there isn't anything of substance to follow up on beyond that.
- inglor_cz 1y ago
  Are the anti-discrimination laws based on anything else than feelings of their proponents with regard to what is wrong and what is right? If this sort of discrimination was economically ineffective, you would see the market itself slowly adjusting towards a more efficient equilibrium, even without explicit laws.
  - vlovich123 1y ago
    Discrimination is not rooted in economic efficiency so I don’t follow the argument that market forces would correct it.
    - seneca 1y ago
      > Discrimination is not rooted in economic efficiency so I don’t follow the argument that market forces would correct it. It absolutely is in this case. The whole reason to target ads is to make the people who receive them more likely to engage with them. For instance, including men, elderly people, and children in the target demographic for a preschool teacher job advertisement would make that advertisement significantly less efficient, which is why it's not done. Forcing companies to disallow targeting of ads because some people are offended by the population's job preferences is absurd.
      - vlovich123 1y ago
        It took a long time for doctors to become more balanced despite it not necessarily being economically efficient. There’s inertia where people don’t like changing the status quo. I don’t know if solving the ad targeting changes anything given that the bias is on the advertiser side, but it could conceivably change the candidate pool that is being selected from.
HappyPanacea 1y ago
What is gained from allowing such bias?
- rvnx 1y ago
  Situation: Men are clicking on job of mechanics, more than women. Consequence: men are now more likely shown mechanics job. What is gained: more accurate content, more interesting content, more engagement. As a result: men are more likely to be shown jobs interesting for men, and women are more likely to be shown jobs interesting for women. Which means: Increased chances to find a matching job, and to save time doing so.
  - troupo 1y ago
    Nope. What you eventually get is women not getting a variety of jobs they could apply to and a death of men in professions that actually need more men (e.g. nurses, teachers etc.) We already been through this. It's not ancient history
    - fastball 1y ago
      Yeahhhhhh, those jobs don't have those ratios due to facebook ads.
    - rvnx 1y ago
      Keep in mind that these advertising algorithms are never 100% pushing jobs catered for a specific group, they keep a % of exploration. https://www.tutorialspoint.com/machine_learning/machine_learning_exploitation_and_exploration.htm https://www.tutorialspoint.com/machine_learning/machine_lear... This is exploration vs exploitation dilemma. For example let's say that 10% of ads are thrown randomly, and from these random rolls these patterns are discovered: > [Denver+<40-50> years+men]: mechanics +10% > [Denver+<40-50> years+men]: nurse -5% Then the system can apply these coefficients on 90% of the other traffic. If you are making 100% exploration (so 100% random), then it means the people are going to miss their relevant job opportunity (having a net negative impact on the society). Increasing exploration is a solution that would legally actually reduce biases of previouses patterns, but at the cost of less relevant content. In all cases, if the bias is real, exploration discovers them and the coefficients already naturally adjust. One exception, advertisers can artificially restrict saying "I want only men between 30-40" in their targeting filters. Then what Meta can do ? Not much.
standardUser 1y ago
> I don't think anyone is meaningfully harmed by being algorithmically shown job ads stereotypical of one gender rather than another If you show me a lower paying girl job instead of a higher paying boy job, and I apply for and get the girl job, how is the company tricking me into applying for the lower paying job based on my gender not a problem to you? How was I not harmed by having a better opportunity hidden from me based on my presumed gender?
- seneca 1y ago
  > If you show me a lower paying girl job instead of a higher paying boy job, and I apply for and get the girl job, how is the company tricking me into applying for the lower paying job based on my gender not a problem to you? How as I not harmed by having a better opportunity hidden from me based on my presumed gender? Not highlighting something to you is not the same as hiding it from you. If you want a job atypical of your demographic, you have the ability to look it up and apply for it. The fact that you might not do that does not justify forcing people to do dramatically less efficient advertising by knowingly including cohorts unlikely to engage with what they're offering.
  - ivan_gammel 1y ago
    The most efficient advertising of jobs is not gender-based, it’s skill-based. Ideally you need to show your ads to candidates with exact match to job description and then some more if the pool is too small. It has nothing to do with gender.
    - seneca 1y ago
      The most efficient advertisement for a job would be to only advertise it to the single candidate who is the best fit for your profile, is looking for a job, and would accept the salary you're offering. Unfortunately intimately detailed profiles like that aren't available, so we target cohorts with the coarse details we do have such as age and gender.
      - 1y ago
personomas 1y ago
Totally agree. EU and Europe is going insane with crazy ass laws to punish american companies and regulate everything to death, while they allow their states get away with becoming totalitarian. #unreal
- piva00 1y ago
  I invite you to stop the screeching speech, it's self-defeating and usually the sign of a mind incapable of nuance. Learn nuance, it's going to help you in life...
- Esophagus4 1y ago
  FYI, this practice has been ruled illegal in the US as well under employment discrimination laws. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/historic-decision-digital-bias-eeoc-finds-employers-violated-federal-law-when-they https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/historic-decision-digita...
rpdillon 1y ago
They accuse the algorithm of perpetuating gender stereotypes, but it's really society that's doing that. The ads are just trying to be the most efficient and in doing so they mirror the preferences of society. I don't know why anybody ever assumed that professions would ideally be 50-50 by gender, but that does seem to be something that people come into these arguments assuming. Put another way, what's the conversion rate shear between mechanic job listings between women and men? Overall, agree with your take.
- ivan_gammel 1y ago
  >I don't know why anybody ever assumed that professions would ideally be 50-50 by gender It’s not that. We know that in most professions there’s no reason to assume that they should have a preferred gender. This means that even if pool of candidates is 99:1, that 1 candidate must have equal opportunities for employment. And that means no pre-screening through targeted ads.
  - rpdillon 1y ago
    Why does it mean that?
  - unparagoned 1y ago
    So say a school has funding to find 10 candidates for a job using the biased algorithms. Are you saying it’s best to force the school to use an algorithm such that they only find 5 with it still unlikely that any of those 5 are of a different sex. In effect forcing schools to hire a worse member of staff(due to reduced candidate pool.)
    - ivan_gammel 1y ago
      In what part of Multiverse funding is allocated for use of biased algorithms that enable discrimination?

paperhatwriter 1y ago

Can you explain why you think this?

cm2012 1y ago
The algorithm is responding to people's revealed preferences in what job ads they want to see
- hydrogen7800 1y ago
  All discrimination can be described as "revealed preference". A very convenient way of ignoring systemic harm.
  - fastball 1y ago
    The onus needs to be on convincingly demonstrating the alleged systemic harm. Until then, "revealed preference" seems more appropriate.
    - hydrogen7800 1y ago
      Are you saying the harm from gender-based employment discrimination needs to be demonstrated, or that harm from facebook's permitting of that discrimination needs to be demonstrated?
      - rpdillon 1y ago
        You're begging the question. The challenge is to compel belief that unequal gender distribution across professions creates a systemic harm.
  - billy99k 1y ago
    If a company gets 0% response from a certain group, why should they have to pay for ads, when the likelihood they will find a candidate is next to nothing? This also only ever goes in one direction. A friend of mine works for a company run by and employs 100% women. In any other context, it would be illegal. Instead, it's considered 'diverse' and 'empowering'. Based on statistics alone, it's obvious the company is hiring women based on choice. Tech companies, like Duo, touted the fact that they had all women development teams a few years back. When discrimination like this is an accepted practice, I stop listening.
    - handoflixue 1y ago
      Maybe Tech companies like Duo are just running gendered job ads, and that's why men aren't applying - they never see the ads. By your logic, that would be totally acceptable, right?
  - inglor_cz 1y ago
    You can always claim harm, but proving it is a different story. Policies like that are based on results of psychological research such as "stereotype threat", which has recently fallen victim to the reproducibility crisis. In other words, the entire social engineering structure of such laws may be a house built on sand.
- wiseowise 1y ago
  How far are you willing to stretch this? What about skin color? Nationality? Religion?
  - mustyoshi 1y ago
    Not the guy you're responding to but I'm not going to willingly pay money for pork rind ads to be shown to Muslims. In fact I'd go so far as to suggest that should be illegal as a hate crime.
    - JuniperMesos 1y ago
      Under that legal regime I could imagine Meta being simultaneously sued by one group of people for not discriminating enough on one demographic category, and by another group of people for discriminating too much along a different category. And this ultimately why I would like to see these kinds of laws repealed completely.
    - em-bee 1y ago
      only if the ads are targeted specifically at muslims. otherwise such ads would be offensive even if posted on streets in cities where muslims live.
  - nkmnz 1y ago
    So if I advertise my golfing equipment only in golf clubs, and golf clubs happen to be predominantly visited by old white men, am I discriminating against the young, against women, and against people of color?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - handoflixue 1y ago
      There's a big difference between first-order and second-order effects. If you explicitly check the box that says "show this job only to old white men" then we can prove your intent was to discriminate. If you advertise at a golf club, we have no such proof. Also, unless the golf club is discriminating, female golfers are just as able to see the ad -vs- male golfers.
- flir 1y ago
  I'd bet a chunk of cash that it's segmenting people, at least initially. And the "gender A" segment are seeing the ads that are popular with the "gender B" segment at a far lower rate, or not at all. So it's not an individual's revealed preferences, it's a group's revealed preferences. And that's where the discrimination comes in.
mrighele 1y ago
Not op, but if I was paying for ads on a platform, I want to make the best use of my money, and target users that may more likely react positively. If this means that ads looking for mechanics are more likely to be seen by men, so be it, why should I show them to somebody not interested ? Unless somebody says explicitly "no women", there is no discrimination in my opinion.
- a4isms 1y ago
  Reminds me of an old argument that if I'm running a restaurant, and if customers don't want to be served by coloured people or homosexuals, I shouldn't have to hire them. It's bad for business, what other reason do I need? At some point, we have to face the fact that there are two kinds of freedom: The freedom TO something-or-other, and the freedom FROM something-or-other. And the two are often in tension, requiring actual judgment calls and weighing of values, because there is no one perfectly crafted set of objective rules to sort that mess out. Some people care about the freedom from algorithms not showing them ads for jobs they are qualified to do and pay better, but the companies would prefer the freedom TO primarily hire whomever they please and advertise to whomever they please. Those two freedoms are in tension. If the freedom from gender discrimination in the marketplace freedom doesn't matter to you, or matters les than the freedom for someone else TO advertise only to men, well, I can see that you are consistent in your beliefs of things I deeply disagree with.
- torben-friis 1y ago
  >why should I show them to somebody not interested ? Because interaction goes both ways. A big influencer on women not being interested could be a societal expectation that is not a job for them, which you’re unknowingly reinforcing. This is particularly important when it’s not “mechanic jobs” but “senior jobs” for example. Only male workers being “proposed” leadership positions over time leads to a statistically significant imbalance.
- IanCal 1y ago
  That’s a pretty simple rule but allows lots of deliberate ways to significantly reduce one group. You have however written a thing here that’s fine - it’s totally fine if your advert is seen more by men. But what you want, and what we as a society generally want, is for those ads to be shown to likely candidates regardless of gender. Given two equally qualified people, do you want your ads to only be shown to one of them, because the other is a woman? I assume not because you want to hire th best person not the best man. The issue isn’t that the ads are shown to more men because they target things like “has said they have worked as a mechanic and are looking for a job” and that happens to be more for men, the accusations is that Facebook is specifically using your gender to determine what job adverts to show you.
potatoproduct 1y ago
To ban this would mean in principle you need to ban any kind of algorithm that uses user and/or activity data for any platform. Ie. No content recommendations on reddit, tikok, facebook, youtube, amazon, twiter, etc.
tmoertel 1y ago
Not the OP, but: This is actually a thorny problem. Say you have an advertising system that knows nothing about a user’s gender. This system, by construction, cannot vary its ad selections based on gender. But the system does remember whether users have expressed interest in the ads it has previously shown them. Now say you have a job that in general appeals to one gender almost exclusively. The system will, given time, learn which users are interested in ads for this job. Those users will just happen to be almost exclusively of one gender. If the ad system stops showing ads for this job to the users who have demonstrated they don’t want to see them, is that gender discrimination? One can make an argument either way. But either way, it’s not going to be a clear-cut argument. There’s some subtlety required.
- rowanG077 1y ago
  Taken to its logical conclusion you essentially have to make targeted ads illegal. Now it's gender, next it's race, then it's socioeconomic standing. Then it's age. Etc etc.
  - em-bee 1y ago
    for job ads that is exactly right. discrimination in hiring is already illegal, and therefore logically targeted jobs ads are illegal too.
  - Eddy_Viscosity2 1y ago
    I think making targeted ads illegal is a great idea all by itself. It would kneecap the entire surveillance and data industry built around tracking people for f**g ads. The gov will still track you though, but that's a different nut to crack.
    - Ekaros 1y ago
      I wonder if this should also apply to more traditional areas. Say TV and magazines. So advertisers should not be able to choose which demographics they target via proxy. That is you should not be able to choose say magazine or tv slot based on demographics.

onraglanroad 1y ago

Well I don't really care what you think or agree with and I'm quite happy to see Meta reprimanded. Since all you offered were your feelings, there isn't anything of substance to follow up on beyond that.

inglor_cz 1y ago
Are the anti-discrimination laws based on anything else than feelings of their proponents with regard to what is wrong and what is right? If this sort of discrimination was economically ineffective, you would see the market itself slowly adjusting towards a more efficient equilibrium, even without explicit laws.
- vlovich123 1y ago
  Discrimination is not rooted in economic efficiency so I don’t follow the argument that market forces would correct it.
  - seneca 1y ago
    > Discrimination is not rooted in economic efficiency so I don’t follow the argument that market forces would correct it. It absolutely is in this case. The whole reason to target ads is to make the people who receive them more likely to engage with them. For instance, including men, elderly people, and children in the target demographic for a preschool teacher job advertisement would make that advertisement significantly less efficient, which is why it's not done. Forcing companies to disallow targeting of ads because some people are offended by the population's job preferences is absurd.
    - vlovich123 1y ago
      It took a long time for doctors to become more balanced despite it not necessarily being economically efficient. There’s inertia where people don’t like changing the status quo. I don’t know if solving the ad targeting changes anything given that the bias is on the advertiser side, but it could conceivably change the candidate pool that is being selected from.

HappyPanacea 1y ago

What is gained from allowing such bias?

rvnx 1y ago
Situation: Men are clicking on job of mechanics, more than women. Consequence: men are now more likely shown mechanics job. What is gained: more accurate content, more interesting content, more engagement. As a result: men are more likely to be shown jobs interesting for men, and women are more likely to be shown jobs interesting for women. Which means: Increased chances to find a matching job, and to save time doing so.
- troupo 1y ago
  Nope. What you eventually get is women not getting a variety of jobs they could apply to and a death of men in professions that actually need more men (e.g. nurses, teachers etc.) We already been through this. It's not ancient history
  - fastball 1y ago
    Yeahhhhhh, those jobs don't have those ratios due to facebook ads.
  - rvnx 1y ago
    Keep in mind that these advertising algorithms are never 100% pushing jobs catered for a specific group, they keep a % of exploration. https://www.tutorialspoint.com/machine_learning/machine_learning_exploitation_and_exploration.htm https://www.tutorialspoint.com/machine_learning/machine_lear... This is exploration vs exploitation dilemma. For example let's say that 10% of ads are thrown randomly, and from these random rolls these patterns are discovered: > [Denver+<40-50> years+men]: mechanics +10% > [Denver+<40-50> years+men]: nurse -5% Then the system can apply these coefficients on 90% of the other traffic. If you are making 100% exploration (so 100% random), then it means the people are going to miss their relevant job opportunity (having a net negative impact on the society). Increasing exploration is a solution that would legally actually reduce biases of previouses patterns, but at the cost of less relevant content. In all cases, if the bias is real, exploration discovers them and the coefficients already naturally adjust. One exception, advertisers can artificially restrict saying "I want only men between 30-40" in their targeting filters. Then what Meta can do ? Not much.

standardUser 1y ago

> I don't think anyone is meaningfully harmed by being algorithmically shown job ads stereotypical of one gender rather than another If you show me a lower paying girl job instead of a higher paying boy job, and I apply for and get the girl job, how is the company tricking me into applying for the lower paying job based on my gender not a problem to you? How was I not harmed by having a better opportunity hidden from me based on my presumed gender?

seneca 1y ago
> If you show me a lower paying girl job instead of a higher paying boy job, and I apply for and get the girl job, how is the company tricking me into applying for the lower paying job based on my gender not a problem to you? How as I not harmed by having a better opportunity hidden from me based on my presumed gender? Not highlighting something to you is not the same as hiding it from you. If you want a job atypical of your demographic, you have the ability to look it up and apply for it. The fact that you might not do that does not justify forcing people to do dramatically less efficient advertising by knowingly including cohorts unlikely to engage with what they're offering.
- ivan_gammel 1y ago
  The most efficient advertising of jobs is not gender-based, it’s skill-based. Ideally you need to show your ads to candidates with exact match to job description and then some more if the pool is too small. It has nothing to do with gender.
  - seneca 1y ago
    The most efficient advertisement for a job would be to only advertise it to the single candidate who is the best fit for your profile, is looking for a job, and would accept the salary you're offering. Unfortunately intimately detailed profiles like that aren't available, so we target cohorts with the coarse details we do have such as age and gender.
    - 1y ago

personomas 1y ago

Totally agree. EU and Europe is going insane with crazy ass laws to punish american companies and regulate everything to death, while they allow their states get away with becoming totalitarian. #unreal

piva00 1y ago
I invite you to stop the screeching speech, it's self-defeating and usually the sign of a mind incapable of nuance. Learn nuance, it's going to help you in life...
Esophagus4 1y ago
FYI, this practice has been ruled illegal in the US as well under employment discrimination laws. https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/historic-decision-digital-bias-eeoc-finds-employers-violated-federal-law-when-they https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/historic-decision-digita...

rpdillon 1y ago

They accuse the algorithm of perpetuating gender stereotypes, but it's really society that's doing that. The ads are just trying to be the most efficient and in doing so they mirror the preferences of society. I don't know why anybody ever assumed that professions would ideally be 50-50 by gender, but that does seem to be something that people come into these arguments assuming. Put another way, what's the conversion rate shear between mechanic job listings between women and men? Overall, agree with your take.

ivan_gammel 1y ago
>I don't know why anybody ever assumed that professions would ideally be 50-50 by gender It’s not that. We know that in most professions there’s no reason to assume that they should have a preferred gender. This means that even if pool of candidates is 99:1, that 1 candidate must have equal opportunities for employment. And that means no pre-screening through targeted ads.
- rpdillon 1y ago
  Why does it mean that?
- unparagoned 1y ago
  So say a school has funding to find 10 candidates for a job using the biased algorithms. Are you saying it’s best to force the school to use an algorithm such that they only find 5 with it still unlikely that any of those 5 are of a different sex. In effect forcing schools to hire a worse member of staff(due to reduced candidate pool.)
  - ivan_gammel 1y ago
    In what part of Multiverse funding is allocated for use of biased algorithms that enable discrimination?