
Facebook Is Letting Job Advertisers Target Only Men - danso
https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-is-letting-job-advertisers-target-only-men
======
patmcc
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)?

~~~
mdasen
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disparate_impact)

One thing you might be interested in reading about is Disparate Impact.
Discrimination cases can be proven by showing that a practice has a
disproportionately adverse impact on members of a protected class, even in the
absence of intentional discrimination.

The Supreme Court noted in Griggs v. Duke Power Co that the Civil Rights Act
bans "not only overt discrimination but also practices that are fair in form,
but discriminatory in operation." In fact, "absence of discriminatory intent
does not redeem employment procedures" that operate in a discriminatory
manner. Unintentional discrimination is still discrimination.

In a piece on age-based discrimination, Facebook said, "age-based targeting
for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason:
it helps employers recruit and people of all ages find work."
([https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-ads-age-
discrimi...](https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-ads-age-
discrimination-targeting)).

I think a lot of the industry has been casual about job ads, but Facebook is
kinda the first platform that really lets you be exact with a lot of your
targeting. Before, maybe you feign ignorance that "Men's Health" doesn't have
a lot of women readers. Plus, women can read Men's Health. However, I can't
get Facebook ads targeted to a different gender. Facebook lets you be
reasonably exacting.

If I create a Facebook ad for a job application with no other promotion of the
opening (including on my company's website) and target it just to men, is that
discriminatory? IANAL, but in Griggs the court held that procedures that act
as built-in headwinds for protected groups are illegal. Making it so that
women could only hear about the job from a man seems like quite a headwind
working against their likelihood of getting the job. Griggs is about job
qualifications that were used as a proxy to keep black workers from getting
jobs, but making it so that a group of potential workers can't even see the
job application seems similar.

Going back to your example: if someone used a gender proxy like "people who
like action movies", I think it would be hard to defend in court. 1) They
don't need to prove discriminatory intent, just disparate impact. 2) It seems
likely that a company adopting such targeting would have communication
indicating their discriminatory intent. "Facebook won't let us target by
gender anymore! What can we do?" "Let's use things like action movies to get
the same result!" If that comes out in discovery, it would seem like a simple
case. 3) At some point, a court is going to want to know what the basis of
that targeting was and it's going to sound really hollow. But it doesn't even
matter if they come up with a good cover story, because even if it was
unintentional, it can still fall afoul of the law.

On the other hand, if I run a tech company and wanted to target "people you
are into the Python programming language", that's a group that will likely
skew male, but it kinda passes a sniff-test. It just doesn't smell funny.
"Yeah, um, we want programmers and I thought targeting people into Python was
reasonable." That does sound reasonable. It's not meant as a proxy for gender,
but for an interest/skill that is closely related to the job. Action movies
aren't related to my job, but a programming language is.

Going back to the magazines: I think much of the same might apply, but I'm
guessing that we've been relatively lax about it as a society. It might not
feel inherently discriminatory, but disparate impact doesn't rely on
intentional discrimination. You say, "that's just how advertising works," but
you could easily place ads in multiple places to reach a wide variety of
people. One program might not reflect the population at large, but I don't
think it's rocket science to advertise in multiple places to reach a more
representative sample.

As I noted above, Facebook says that job targeting (at least on age) is an
accepted industry practice. There are people that don't like the disparate
impact theory (though it is established Supreme Court precedent since 1971).
Plus, I don't know if disparate impact has ever been used in terms of
narrowing the field before applications even come in. In Griggs, the procedure
disproprotionately weeded out black applicants. In the Facebook case, those
potential applicants never even knew the job existed.

I have definitely thought the same things you've thought. Society is hard.
Fairness is hard. But I think it's important that we work toward fairness.
This isn't meant to be anti-company. I just think companies should have a bit
of a justification for doing something if it runs contrary to fairness. If
you're only advertising your programming jobs to people under 40, why? If the
answer is, "we mostly don't want to hire older programmers, but if a good one
happens to come along we'll take them", that doesn't feel like a great
justification. In fact, it basically admits discrimination. If the answer is,
"there are more young programmers than old programmers", I think the retort
has to be, "given the loads of ways you can target, why not target based on
interests rather than age or gender? Targeting to people interested in CS,
various programming languages, etc. seems both better for you and for
potential applicants...unless you're trying to discriminate." It's not always
simple, straight-forward, or easy, but I think we're trying to build a better,
more fair society and that requires hard-work and questioning.

~~~
fapjacks
Speaking of smells, my initial reaction is that Disparate Impact smells
broken. I can see pretty clearly how it would be possible to argue legally
that advertising a job internally and not externally (to a company) is
discriminatory. And following that further along, in this way, I can see a
pretty straightforward method of declaring _any_ job advertising as
discriminatory under that decision. I think law like this is broken because
it's like many (American) laws where it ends up selectively enforced, because
the base of people violating the law is effectively infinite. So in that way
it's not used to fight discrimination, but instead becomes yet one more way to
fight the oldest battle in history: The battle to consolidate and preserve the
power of existing institutions of control and weaken the influence of
competition and punish outsiders.

~~~
adamlett
_I think law like this is broken because it 's like many (American) laws where
it ends up selectively enforced_

Laws like these are not criminal laws, and are not meant to be _enforced_ if
by that you mean _policed_. It's up to someone to file a lawsuit, if they
think the law is on their side. Then a judge will have to rule whether or not
the law applies in that particular case, and in doing so they may set a
precedent which will influence how later cases will be judged.

 _And following that further along, in this way, I can see a pretty
straightforward method of declaring any job advertising as discriminatory
under that decision_

You may think so, but this is why we have judges. Just because you _can_ make
and argument, it doesn't mean that argument will be persuasive to a judge. You
may further think that this means that the outcome of a trial is arbitrary,
and you would be right in the sense that law is not an exact science, and the
result of a verdict can be difficult to predict if the evidence is weak and/or
there is no precedent. But you would also be wrong in the sense that each
verdict rendered helps to set precedent, and judges (and lawyers) _always_
look to see what precedent has been set, both when it comes to how to
interpret the law, but also when it comes to establishing what counts and
doesn't count as evidence.

Disclaimer: IANAL. I'm not even American.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The fact that it's not actively enforced by the state doesn't matter.

It's basically the civil equivalent of an actively enforced law nobody can
possibly comply with at all times that gives the cops the power to harass
whoever they want whenever they want (e.g. the 55mph speed limit on I95 in the
Boston area) except instead of empowering cops to harass people on flimsy
pretext they're empowering plantiffs to harass companies on flimsy pretext.

Laws and precedents (in the case of civil litigation) that well meaning
parties can't possibly comply with are bad.

~~~
Someguywhatever
The law is written assuming that it won't be abused even despite it being ripe
for abuse.

------
pteredactyl
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
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
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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
"There are differences between genders."

For sure. But you're not hiring a sex, you're hiring a person and individuals
can match requirements for almost all types of position regardless of sex.

~~~
thecopy
So if i have a job that requires a man, why should i be coerced into paying
for showing the ads for women?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>for almost all types of position

You shouldn't IMO.

However, you should also understand that people do get jobs through other
people seeing adverts - so worth bearing in mind.

------
King-Aaron
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
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
Facebook does not employ anyone here, it's about ads.

~~~
Endy
If you allow an unlawful ad to exist on your platform, you are knowingly
violating the law and should be punished.

------
patcheudor
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.

~~~
twblalock
Facebook publishes the ads. If someone asks Facebook to publish an illegal ad
(or to do anything else that's illegal), Facebook should refuse.

If you do something illegal because your users asked you to, it's still
illegal.

The article is pretty clear that publishing the ads is illegal.

~~~
golemotron
Facebook is a publisher? I thought it still operated user content under the
DMCA safe harbors.

~~~
twblalock
The safe harbor protects sites whose users infringe copyright, if certain
conditions are met. I don't think it applies to advertising.

An example of safe harbor protection would be something like a user uploading
a copyrighted song without a site's knowledge. If the site did not know about
it, did not benefit from it financially, and takes it down when they are told
about it, safe harbor protections would probably apply.

In contrast, Facebook knows the content and targeting options of every ad that
they publish, and makes money from the ads.

~~~
xfitm3
I believe you're thinking of OCILLA which is USC Section 512(c) [0].

You might want to look at USC Section 230 [1] which says "No provider or user
of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or
speaker of any information provided by another information content provider."

[0]
[http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/512.html](http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/512.html)
[1]
[http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/230.html](http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/47/230.html)

------
fjcp
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
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
> _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-
perce...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/03/06/chart-the-percentage-
women-and-men-each-profession/GBX22YsWl0XaeHghwXfE4H/story.html)

It draws data from the U.S. Department of Labor

~~~
jermaustin1
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.

------
gehwartzen
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-...](https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2011-title29-vol4/xml/CFR-2011-title29-vol4-part1604.xml)

~~~
zeroname
_" § 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
This does imply the TSA are breaking the law given the story above about how
they "strongly encourage" women to apply.

~~~
Cthulhu_
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
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.

------
danso
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.

------
yesenadam
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
As other comments in the thread make clear, they didn't understand the law.

~~~
yesenadam
I'm in Australia. I'm don't know what the law is here, I guess what they said
it was.

------
d--b
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.

------
cbovis
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
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
Could you elaborate on what line that is? How would you go slightly farther
and cross it?

~~~
scarface74
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?”

------
Meph504
(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.

~~~
mbrumlow
> 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?

------
contem
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
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
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!

------
planb
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.

------
jokoon
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
> 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
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.”

------
Bucephalus355
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
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
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.

------
jeffreyrogers
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.

------
maerF0x0
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
No. [http://danluu.com/tech-discrimination/](http://danluu.com/tech-
discrimination/)

~~~
reversecs
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
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
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.

------
Sol-
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.

------
ramblerman
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
Legally speaking, job ads are not the same as those for consumer products or
services.

------
deaps
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
> 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
What is the legal text supporting this?

~~~
nailer
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
That quote talks about criteria, not where ads can be placed.

~~~
nailer
Placing ads limited by gender could still be viewed as limiting criteria.
IANAL: go look up lawyers who have discussed ad targeting strategy as being in
violation of labour laws many times before.

------
GreenToad5
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
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.

------
zonidjan
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_
> 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.

------
amelius
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).

------
hajile
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
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."

------
peter303
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.

------
sebleon
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.

------
basicplus2
Its a bit silly to expect companies like facebook do the job of police or a
government regulator.

------
GhostVII
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
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.

------
hazbo
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)

------
j16sdiz
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
> 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
> 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
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.

------
SamReidHughes
Related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18016576](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18016576)

------
jsonne
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.

------
lawnchair_larry
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.

------
black6
This is the whole point of advertising on Facebag -- targeting a demographic.
THIS IS WHAT THEY SELL.

------
jexah
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?"

------
chuckgreenman
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
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.

------
gfiorav
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.

------
jtms
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?

~~~
Endy
Because of the law and the EEOC.

~~~
jtms
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=ADWO...](https://support.google.com/google-
ads/answer/2580383?co=ADWORDS.IsAWNCustomer%3Dfalse&hl=en)

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

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

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

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

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

~~~
sct202
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
Does this mean they are letting advertisers target only women too?

------
beatpanda
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
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
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.

------
spullara
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.

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

~~~
Endy
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.

------
DocTomoe
... or - most likely - only women.

------
amelius
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.

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

~~~
Endy
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.

------
mbrumlow
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...

------
y3sh
At first i thought who cares, but then i saw 300+ comments.

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

------
mankash666
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_
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.

------
craig_peacock
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
"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.

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

~~~
Endy
No, this is specific to employment law. You can advertise products or services
to whomever you wish. Employment must have equal opportunity.

~~~
horsecaptin
I mistyped. I meant targets a gender for employment.

------
_zachs
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.

------
root_axis
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!

------
kakarot
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.

~~~
PeterisP
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
> 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.

