
Dozens of Companies Are Using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads - danso
https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-ads-age-discrimination-targeting
======
015UUZn8aEvW
I'm a grad student at an elite American university. Several weeks ago, some
other students and I attended a recruiting presentation put on by a large
multinational company I won't name. The woman who gave the presentation
services her company's contract with a tech company, that, let's just say, has
a big share of the search engine market.

She emphasized that she was looking for diversity, because, as she said, "the
type of people on the other side of the table from us are different than they
used to be, and they don't want to be dealing with a bunch of 65-year-old
white guys. So those aren't the type of people we're looking for." That's
pretty much a direct quote.

I was at a small company before I went to grad school. The company began
working with a guy in his sixties who'd been laid off for a while and couldn't
find work, even though he had a ton of experience. We brought him in on a
contract basis, and his role gradually expanded as it became clear that he had
both excellent technical knowledge and great people skills. He became a mentor
to me and helped me out a ton. He's objectively better at our profession than
I am in multiple dimensions, but right now I could find a new job ten times
more easily than he could.

I'd like to start a business in 3 or 4 years, and I'm seriously considering
going out of my way to target people like him. It'll be my competitive
advantage.

~~~
user5994461
>>> I'd like to start a business in 3 or 4 years, and I'm seriously
considering going out of my way to target people like him. It'll be my
competitive advantage.

He could be 10 times more expensive than you. Did you consider that?

~~~
nhebb
As someone in their 50's, that argument makes no sense to me. If I were unable
to find a job, you somehow think I'd hold out for premium wages?

~~~
user5994461
A lot of people in their 50's don't need to work. As long as they bought their
home when it was affordable, they are fine. Some have sizable assets that the
younger folks can't dream to achieve in their lifetime.

They won't accept work for less than premium wages, don't need to.

That being said, I admit that there is also another part of the population who
is struggling and desperate for work at any price.

Last but not least there is the question of what is premium wage. In London
for instance, a lot of folks over 30 moved to contracting where they can
charge a good daily rate, without the hassle of whiteboard interview, overtime
or politics. You'll see many companies (see the HN who is hiring) allegedly
struggling to recruit at their great wages, but the truth is that employees
have moved out to greener pastures for twice the money.

~~~
nhebb
> A lot of people in their 50's don't need to work.

I must travel in lowly circles.

~~~
user5994461
I suppose the distribution is extreme on both sides. Either you accumulated
assets from early on and you're golden, or you're still struggling with rent
and no pension in sight.

~~~
Balgair
Um, what?

Like, cashflow at 50 with 3 kids is important.

Yeah, you've saved for retirement at ~65ish, but you have 2 kids in college
with one on the way up, plus a mortgage, plus just regular life stuff. That's
not an unreasonable scenario at all.

Like, do you live in a first world nation? Honestly, the paradigm changes a
lot in the 3rd world and your confusion would be more appropriate in Chad or
something.

(In Chad, average age of first birth is 18, so you'd reasonably be a grand
parent by 50, plus cost of living is very low)

~~~
user5994461
I live in a first world nation. College education is free, allegedly.

If you have kids before your thirties, they will all be +25 when you are 55.
They most likely finished college, they probably left the family home.

~~~
Balgair
In the US college is NOT free, and that's 330 million people living here.

------
combatentropy
It doesn't make sense to me to discriminate against people with more
experience. Can someone explain it to me?

I have heard that companies like recent grads because they are (1) more
malleable and (2) can be paid less. But neither of those reasons seem to me
strong enough. I'm talking completely about the company's own interests.

Let's address the first reason: malleability. A recent grad presumably will
adopt the company's culture faster, complain less, and in general pick up
things sooner. Well, the hardest, meanest coworkers I've ever had were late
twenties, early thirties. I've worked with people in their sixties, and
they're sweet people. Even the grumpy old sysadmin had only a thin layer of
spikes. After just a few days I could see through most of it, and he was 10
times more helpful than my other sysadmins. Not only was he softer (at least
deep down) but he was smarter, having done it for decades. Even when he met a
new problem, his keenly developed taste made him more likely to choose
something that would be more maintainable long term.

Now let's address the second reason: salary. I am 10 times better than I was
when I started. I know, because I still work with some of my code from back
then, and I desperately want to rewrite it all. How much more does a senior
developer make than a new hire? 50% more? Seems worth it to me. 100% more?
200% more? Still maybe worth it. And if some old fella can't get work at all,
maybe he would settle for something between 50% and 100% more. I mean, why not
at least make an offer?

It just don't make no sense. Other fields reward grayhairs. You see some
sixty-year-old painter or architect or carpenter, you think he's probably
pretty good. You see some straight-out-of-college twenty-something in . . .
_any_ other field, you think, "I sure hope he knows what he's doing."

~~~
leggomylibro
It's a race to the bottom. You could pay more for better work that gets done
more slowly (fewer hours as people have families, etc,) or you could pay less
for worse work that gets done more quickly.

Well, iOS11 needs to ship on its annual schedule, non-negotiable. And the SVP
will really complain if I ask for more money this quarter. So, cheap it is.

If a bridge falls down, it's really obvious and people die. If billions of
computers become vulnerable to malicious actors and a few hundred or thousand
people suffer dramatic personal damages, well that's a nice and quiet problem
which will be quickly forgotten in the 24-hour news cycle.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
I'm one of the greyhairs. I won't work the insane hours, but I'll still get
more done. How? By knowing what to write and how to write it, so I don't have
to fumble around trying things for nearly as long. By not writing the bugs
that the 20-somethings write, which means I don't have to take the time to try
to fix them. By not creating the shoddy designs that other create, which then
have to be fixed. By having an idea where to look when bugs do show up, so
that they get fixed more quickly. And so on.

It's about producing working code, not about how many hours my butt is in a
seat...

~~~
exelius
I'm not attacking you here (and in fact I agree with you), but from a
manager's perspective, I need one guy like you to design it in an architecture
modeling tool and 8 young code monkeys to do all the boring work of building
and testing it. You can do the code reviews to make sure they don't do stupid
shit.

The thought is that a team of greyhairs never ships anything, and a team of
youngsters ships garbage. But it's better to ship garbage than nothing, hence
the bias.

~~~
btilly
I STRONGLY disagree.

My experience is that programmers who become "architects" and are only
responsible for design and code review tend to go downhill in their skills. It
SEEMS like an efficient way to use experienced people, but it is actually an
anti-pattern. Their tendency is to develop ideas that sound good but don't
work well in practice, and there is no direct way to correct the mistake. (Any
time it doesn't work, the tendency is to blame the implementer. And there is
usually enough to blame that their own contribution to the problem gets
missed. You're less likely to miss the problem when YOU are trying to make the
implementation work.)

In fact the problem is sufficiently bad that in interviews it is important to
have people actually write code to show that they still can. When you get an
"architect" who takes offense at the exercise, that's a non-hire. They might
have been good 10 years ago, but they aren't worth hiring now.

This was something I'd sort of noticed, but didn't become conscious of until I
worked at Google. There they were very conscious of the phenomena. Every
programmer from the most junior to the most senior (for the record that would
be Jeff Dean) writes code. If you're not willing to write code, you're not a
hire.

That said, the exercise goes both ways. If I interview with an employer and I
discover that they design things up front as UML diagrams, odds are that this
won't be a workplace that I want much to do with. If I'm working in a job and
they force me into an abstract architecture role like you describe, I'm going
to quit and find a better job.

~~~
exelius
I mean; that’s fine. I wouldn’t want that job either — it’s why I got an MBA,
got out of the tech side and now actually have power over hires/fires and
product direction. But unless you’re directly bringing revenue in the door,
you are a cost item to be cut. As soon as they can find someone cheaper, they
will.

~~~
doktrin
> As soon as they can find someone cheaper, they will.

This applies to everyone everywhere, and particularly positions that anyone
with basic language and reasoning skills can fill (PMs, MBA types, etc)

~~~
exelius
Naw, the MBA jobs are all about personal brand and networking. When you make
the rules, they tend to benefit you.

~~~
doktrin
> MBA jobs are all about personal brand and networking

No disagreement there. Just in my experience those jobs are either the first
or second to go when things get tough - often because there's an MBA somewhere
near the top who recognizes how replaceable all the rest are.

~~~
exelius
Yeah, but these jobs also often have contracts with severance packages.
Executives (VP and above) are typically hired under fixed contracts that make
it very expensive to get rid of them. You can demand these things if you have
specialized knowledge, credentials, and relationships.

~~~
doktrin
> Executives (VP and above)

Aren't you being overly restrictive in scope here? Many executives are MBAs,
but most MBAs are not executives.

~~~
exelius
True; but stalling out in middle management is never the reason people get an
MBA.

~~~
doktrin
Waiting tables in Hollywood is never the reason people take up acting, and yet
so it goes.

Anecdotally, I know several full time top 10 grads who aren't exactly on the
fast track to the c-suite, and I assume this is even more true for the broader
pool of MBAs.

------
tmh79
I'm astonished that facebook is successfully able to pull the "we're a
platform, its not our fault people are using it illegally" excuse here. There
is a huge difference between allowing people to freely post content on places
like FB, twitter, or Reddit, and selling access the attention of people that
fit specific characteristics.

How long until the tech giants are held accountable for willfully skirting
decades of civil rights legislation.

~~~
avar
If you mainly advertised for employees in certain newspapers you'd get people
of a given political leaning. If you advertised on the radio at 6 in the
morning you probably wouldn't get anyone under 35.

It's not obvious to me why employers should be able to use the implicit
filtering traditional media provides, but not the explicit filtering new
advertising platforms provide.

~~~
tmh79
The problem is that if facebook decides that I am black, I will never be able
to see facebook ads targeted towards white people, I will never know they
exist, and even if I want to see them, I will be unable to, thus I am excluded
from them.

BUT if I am black, I am able to buy a magazine targeted towards white people,
peruse the classified ads, and apply to any jobs that interest me.

The other issue is that political leanings are not a protected class. The bar
for protected classes is, rightfully, set pretty high, to things that are
usually out of one's control (race, age, sexual orientation, gender, etc). I
think its entirely fine to segment these ads based on things that aren't
protected, the problem is using age which is protected.

~~~
dizzystar
I've worked with racists that didn't want me around, I can assure you that you
are better off without them. There's nothing heroic about forcing pigs out of
their slop.

Job ads drop a lot of blatant hints about race, age, gender, religion, and so
on. Instead of me wasting my time applying to a job I can't get, I'd rather
not see them.

Of course, if you are the crusading type, then please go all the way and get
the lawyers on the offending company.

~~~
slededit
Not everyone has the benefit of multiple potential jobs. Anti discrimination
laws exist for those people.

------
tomohawk
A lot of managers are threatened by experienced people because experienced
people are a lot less shy about pointing out bullshit.

People with 5 or less years of experience are much less likely to have a
backbone. They're still getting over the school conditioning to complete
whatever BS assignment needed to get the grade.

Many managers would prefer to have an apparently smoothly running operation
than have honest feedback.

I once worked on a team with several people with 20+ years of experience. We
got new management that did not appreciate that the experienced engineers were
pointing out that pixie dust doesn't actually exist. They ended up "greening"
the team. The new, much less experienced engineers that were brought on
cranked out the code and learned lots of skills, but the product ended up dead
within a couple of years. Those managers all got promoted though.

~~~
le-mark
Experienced people don't necessarily point out bullshit though. Often times,
we just keep quiet and watch the train wreck :)

~~~
pixl97
Well, experienced people know how to CYA and let the boss hang themselves when
they try to blame someone below them.

------
mabbo
> “Used responsibly, 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,” said Rob Goldman, a Facebook vice
> president.

No, that's... that's literally the opposite of 'helping people of all ages
find work'.

~~~
ec109685
Perhaps there are advertisements that work better for some age groups than
others? So by targeting, they can deliver the right ad to the right user.

~~~
shostack
This happens. While I don't advertise for jobs, I do advertise a product, and
the reality is that certain demographics perform better against our KPIs, and
certain creative resonates better with certain audiences.

What we have to reconcile is how to balance the targeting capability and
advantage of using that targeting capability against the legal and ethical
considerations.

So for example, there's probably a difference between "let's target all of
these age brackets with creative that is most relevant to them" vs. "let's
target 18-34 men and explicitly exclude everyone else." The difficult part is
there's a lot of gray area there. What if one segment performs horribly?
Should you exclude them? What if someone has a bias? Can they just run
intentionally bad creative or poorly targeted ads against the demographics
they don't want to create a self-fulfilling prophecy?

Things are not black and white, but it is encouraging to see the discussion
being had.

------
MilnerRoute
I want to believe these companies don't know it's illegal to discriminate
based on age. Because the alternative is that they're intentionally
discriminating -- and thinking they won't get caught, because the ads are only
appearing on Facebook.

But any government agency that's investigating this can obviously just to ask
Facebook for the company's ad buys, and there's an irrefutable paper trail.
(It can't be that hard, since even Propublica was able to put all the pieces
together without any special government powers.)

Or is this a case where they're hoping Facebook's commitment to privacy for ad
purchasers will end up shielding their illegal hiring practices?

~~~
baddox
Genuine question: is it explicitly illegal to discriminate in your _outreach_
for job applications? Surely similar behavior happens all the time without as
much outcry, like recruiting at college career fairs.

~~~
TheSmiddy
At college career fairs you're selecting for people who are graduating with a
relevant degree, there is no age requirements for attending college so a 55
year old who is just completing their bachelors could well be one of the
people you recruit.

Just because the environment you advertise in is inherently skewed young
doesn't make it discrimination, explicitly preventing people of a certain age
from seeing your ad is.

~~~
harryh
_explicitly preventing people of a certain age from seeing your ad is._

But that's not what "you" are doing. All these jobs are public. Every company
in America has a jobs page that anyone of any age is free to look at.

What you are doing is not _paying money_ to force your ad in front of people
in a certain age.

~~~
lionelione43
You bring up a good point. If you choose specifically to advertise to a
specific demographic, can you be fined for NOT advertising to another? Is a
company that puts a job offer ad in a men's or women's magazine breaking the
law?

~~~
evgen
Does the men's or women's magazine explicitly work to prevent people of the
other gender from being able to read its articles? You can legally pick an
environment/medium in which to run your ad that may have a specific
demographic, but when you get to explicitly set viewership then you have to be
much more careful.

------
mschuster91
Hmm. There _is_ a valid use case for microtargeting: show potential candidates
different perks. Young people will be lured by stuff like free food/beer,
while older age brackets will be more interested in health benefits or "family
friendly" work environment.

The way to get it done legally would be to group the ads for different age
groups and have them either all shown/approved or none at all.

------
maltalex
The discussion here is interesting, but I haven't seen any psychological and
sociological aspects of hiring mentioned yet. Not all hiring decisions are
rational.

First, there's a culture thing - when a company is composed out of 20 year
olds, it's natural for them to prefer working with other young people who they
can relate to. That 40 year old job applicant, the one with the kids and the
years of experience in companies that no longer exist doesn't look as
relatable as someone your own age.

Second, there's ego. In a company in which junior and even mid level managers
are 25-35 years old, who wants to hire a 45 year old "veteran" that has 10
years more experience? Managing someone more knowledgeable than you is a
challenge. It's much easier to get a fresh graduate and mold him into the
employee you want him to be. Ego-wise, it's much nicer being the mentor than
the mentee.

There are many more aspects to this and I suspect that they play a more
important role than at least some of the the purely rational reasons for
ageism in our industry.

~~~
s3r3nity
I worry that the "culture" argument has dangerous implications if true, as it
can be used to discriminate on so many grounds outside of age: gender ("If I'm
with a bunch of my bro's, why mess it up with a girl?"), race, language,
disabilities, etc etc.

I thought the "hacker culture" would be supportive of the idea that "if you
can do the job well, let's work together on solving interesting problems,"
rather than the cliche "would I want to grab a beer with this person?"

~~~
maltalex
> I worry that the "culture" argument has dangerous implications if true, as
> it can be used to discriminate on so many grounds outside of age: gender
> ("If I'm with a bunch of my bro's, why mess it up with a girl?"), race,
> language, disabilities, etc etc.

Well, yeah. Only it's not "implications", it's the reality of tech hiring. The
hiring practices of many tech companies have been called racist, sexist and
age-discriminatory (although I haven't heard anything with regard to
disabilities). One of the first counter arguments for the accused company is
"culture fit".

> I thought the "hacker culture" would be supportive of the idea that "if you
> can do the job well, let's work together on solving interesting problems,"
> rather than the cliche "would I want to grab a beer with this person?"

That's great in theory, but it doesn't hold water in practice. People are
people. The "hacker culture" thing might work well if people work together via
a mailing list, but if it's a bunch of people that spend many hours together
in an office, then the social aspect play a bigger role I think.

~~~
soundwave106
In theory, if the tech hiring was purely about skillsets, one could adjust the
interview process to focus only on that. I know some orchestras have shifted
to "blind auditions" to eliminate bias, for instance, and it has helped out
some groups previously left out of orchestras due to bias (female musicians
notably). I think it would be possible to shift a technology-oriented hiring
process towards those lines if one was most concerned about getting the best
people for the job.

In practice, to be honest, a lot of the stories I hear about age bias seem to
come from the SV "startup culture" scene and a few of the other "new
technology" type companies. In some ways, I almost think it's their loss.
Passing over a fair bit of good talent just to get that, er, "culture fit"
they want doesn't seem very optimal to me.

------
indus
Most of the conversation in this thread is around engineering, IT, and whether
grey hairs code better than non-grey hairs, and whether there is an ROI vis-a-
vis money and time.

I'll add a few things about Sales.

Through an acquisition, I spent a few years at one of the largest enterprise
software company. As a PM, I interacted with a lot of grey hair sales
professionals--right from Key Account Directors to Sales Ops to Sales
Engineers to National Account Managers. These were some of the finest. Thanks
to their mentorship, I have not measured, but in 2 years, I became expert at
navigating the buyers of software at large companies, doing calls, replying to
RFPs, handling exceptions, and to a certain degree schmoozing.

Who else would you learn these from? Sales is not taught anywhere!

------
gerdesj
I wanted to pontificate about how I don't hire like that etc etc however, I'll
simply make the observation that an advertisement in a news paper or on a bill
board is open to all.

Just because you can, does not mean you should. Most countries have fairly
strict discriminatory laws. This falls afoul of the lot. You should not be
able to use an advertising platform to pre-filter your applicants.

If you think I'm wrong then substitute "skin colour" or "disabled" or "sex"
for "age" in this discussion. Substitute a combination of all of those ...

This is wrong. So wrong that the perpetrators should be considered criminal.

------
Thinpad
"Used responsibly, 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," said Rob Goldman, a Facebook vice president.

Rob if you are reading this you sound like an idiot. What were you thinking
before uttering those words. Please do all of us a favor quit that VP role you
are definitely not a leader material :).

~~~
lowbloodsugar
No, he sounds like Trump, or Ryan. Here are some words. Those of you who are
smart enough to understand the logical fallacy are a tiny minority. The rest
of you will either parrot them or ridicule them depending on your own existing
personal view.

------
jstewartmobile
Many years ago, I sold real estate. With some regularity, I'd e-mail a list of
homes to an eager young professional couple. The sort who always say the
_correct_ things and always vote the _correct_ way.

One of the homes in that list would be so well shot, and so well priced, that
they'd take time off of work--they _had_ to see it _right now!_ They chatter
excitedly on the drive over. We slow down as we enter the neighborhood. Their
excitement is at its apex. Then the excitement drops an octave. I scan the
horizon, pondering, " _What is this disturbance in the force?_ " Then I
_notice_ , we just drove by a black guy raking his yard. After the next black
guy in his yard--silence.

We pull up to the house. As I let them out of the car, I am met with the faces
of two people searching for an excuse. One of them breaks, " _It 's not that
we're racists. Some of my best friends are black. It's just that, um, we don't
want to be the only white people in the neighborhood._"

They get back into the car. I take them back to the office, and I never see
them again.

Nice neighborhood, great price, neighbors that take care of their yards--
obviously no _rational_ reason to scrub the showing, no one screaming the
n-word, no "far-right" politics, just a couple higher-level office slaves
quietly reclining into the old tribalisms.

------
chishaku
If you'd like to contribute to ProPublica's investigative journalism, you can
donate here:

[https://donate.propublica.org](https://donate.propublica.org)

------
geff82
My colleague is a 64-years-old devops guy. He looks like 78, he sounds like
80, but his brain is working at full speed and his IT-knowledge is not only
very current, but also backed by 35 years of experience. He is the most
valuable guy in our team. Any company missing out on people like him is
shooting itself in the foot.

------
imh
I once worked at a company that was having trouble finding women candidates.
We were a tiny company that at that point largely recruited out of the people
we knew, who were largely people we'd worked with before and people we went to
school with. Mostly dudes. There was a discussion at some point about the
legality of trying harder to get women engineers than men. My understanding is
that you can try to get more people of a protected class to apply in the first
place and it's only once they apply that you have to treat everyone equally.
Is that correct?

If it is, then this seems like the problem in the article would be legal on
the same basis.

~~~
baddox
I don’t know the law or the established ethics (if any exist), but I would
hope that it isn’t frowned upon to focus recruiting efforts toward certain
demographics with the goal of receiving qualified applicants at the same
proportions as the general population (e.g. 50/50 male and female).

------
RomanPushkin
Also:
[https://stallman.org/facebook.html#racism](https://stallman.org/facebook.html#racism)

~~~
nerflad
Important info. But Stallman's writing style is so idiosyncratic that I can't
help but read it in his voice, which I find hilarious.

------
inimino
I'm no fan of Facebook, but I'm having trouble getting worked up about this.

It is illegal to _not hire_ someone on the basis of age, but what is so wrong
about _targeting ads_ at young people, for a job that older people would be
unlikely to apply for anyway? That just seems like common sense. And getting
outraged at _not_ being shown ads, as though your constitutional right to have
companies spend money to let you know about employment opportunities while
you're frittering away time on Facebook were being violated, just screams
entitlement to me.

------
danso
FWIW, FB has posted a rebuttal to ProPublica:
[https://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/addressing-targeting-in-
recru...](https://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/addressing-targeting-in-recruitment-
ads/)

------
user_rob
I think its great!: In the high tech software company I am at there seems to
be a disproportionate number of people over 60 - and we are are leaders in our
industry both in profit and tech. Very pleased that our competitors won't be
poaching our best people!

------
notacoward
"age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice"
is not true. It's f-ing _illegal_ and for good reason. The guy who said that
should be fired.

------
JohnTClark
I don't see the problem with adds that are targeted to a specific age group or
other characteristics of a person, and I am talking about the adds that pop up
in my timeline or on the right side panel. But if I actively search for a job
and it is hidden from me because I am not in the target audience then yes,
that is discrimination.

Ex: I am 25, male, Java developer, I don't want to be bombarded by adds about
nursing jobs or adds about nail polish , but if I type in the search bar
:"nursing jobs in <myArea>" then I want all nursing jobs in my area and the
same thing about nail polish.

------
fsloth
Fun fact:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageism)

Age based discrimination has been us for at least decades, and it has been
prevalent in all industries. I presume it's now getting more publicity as the
baby boomers are entering the discriminated age segment.

It's a more difficult problem than just a few CEO:s in their 30:s wanting to
hire cheap labour.

------
derekp7
Is this different than advertising in a magazine that has a specific reader
demographic? Or would that get a company in trouble too, if a the court rules
that the intent was to exclude a given group?

~~~
danso
It's against U.S. federal law for employers to discriminate against people
aged 40-or-over on the basis of age. Having job ads that only younger people
could see would seemingly fall afoul of that law:

[https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm](https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm)

~~~
smallgovt
I doubt it runs afoul of that law.

Segmentation is a common characteristic of online advertising campaigns. A
sophisticated advertiser never shows the same types of ads to young and old
audiences (especially on Facebook) because the two audiences react drastically
different. If your goal is to run efficient campaigns, you will always
separate the two.

As a result, the advertiser can simply claim that they separated the two, and
then realized they simply couldn't afford the CPC of the older audience (i.e.
the ROI didn't make sense). Alternatively, they could just set a very high bid
for the older audience and never get any traffic to those segments.

Overall, I think you'd be hard pressed to prove discriminatory intent even if
it exists.

~~~
danso
Someone quoted in the article does make the case that the federal age
employment law does allow for other considerations to a "reasonable" degree
when targeting age -- i.e. discrimination isn't as cut-and-dry as it would be
for targeting race or gender:

> _But some companies contend that there are permissible reasons to filter
> audiences by age, as with an ad for entry-level analyst positions at Goldman
> Sachs that was distributed to people 18 to 64. A Goldman Sachs spokesman,
> Andrew Williams, said showing it to people above that age range would have
> wasted money: roughly 25 percent of those who typically click on the firm’s
> untargeted ads are 65 or older, but people that age almost never apply for
> the analyst job..._

> _Pauline Kim, a professor of employment law at Washington University in St.
> Louis, said the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, unlike the federal
> anti-discrimination statute that covers race and gender, allows an employer
> to take into account “reasonable factors” that may be highly correlated with
> the protected characteristic, such as cost, as long as they don’t rely on
> the characteristic explicitly._

------
carapace
FB got in trouble for this same problem awhile back, but it was for allowing
ethnically-targeted ads. Couldn't find a reference, sorry.

edit: references available here:
[https://stallman.org/facebook.html#racism](https://stallman.org/facebook.html#racism)
(Thanks RomanPushkin )

------
gexla
If you are creating FB ads, you target by the segment which gives you the most
leads. I imagine age is just one parameter of those segments.

Personally, I would never think to find a job through FB. IF someone wanted to
target me, being outside that age group, it would need to be a different
platform.

------
rplnt
Maybe they have the same ad with a different picture for older people? Or have
researched that it's only worth targeting this group - from the CTR point of
view? There are so many legit possibilities where it would be absolutely OK to
target job ad by age.

------
chewyshine
It's probably too late to contribute meaningfully to this conversation. But
look at the tone of many of these comments. So many "know it alls." So many
strong opinions about the right way to hire and work with developers. Owners
and execs often don't want to deal with the jaded baggage that comes with
experience. Many owners/execs want to have a person integrate with the
existing work flows rather than having to repeatedly justify a workflow to a
person who thinks he or she knows a better way to do things. Not saying it's
right or wrong, it just is. It also probably violates the uniform guidelines
on employee selection.

------
alasdair_
Does this mean that using Facebook to target tech company ads at women or an
unrepresented minority group, or LGBT people would also be illegal, even if
the goal is to reach out to these people to increase the diversity of the
workplace?

~~~
danans
No, because those are examples of protected classes.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_group)

~~~
Camillo
Under US anti-discrimination laws, _any_ group identified by one of those
characteristics is a protected group, with the notable exception of age. For
example, laws against sexual discrimination protect men as well as women.

In practice, it is unlikely to be enforced for some groups.

------
40acres
This is tough.

Super targeted advertising is exactly why Facebook is so valuable. Add that to
the fact that their marketing tech is so frictionless (it's my knowledge that
you can get your ads up on Facebook relatively quickly w/o interfacing with a
human) and you end up with situations like this.

There are a finite amount of ads that can be shown on TV during a week and a
finite amount of billboards, bus placements and other types of ads. With
Facebook the number of ads on the platform at any given time may be infinite,
how are you supposed to add a review process for these ads especially when
they are not blatantly illegal / harassing?

~~~
Clubber

      if (isJobPosting)
        txtAgeRange.Enabled = false;

------
troels
To be fair, maybe they aren't deliberately discriminating. Advertisement isn't
free, so with a limited budget you will want to optimise your ads for
conversion. That's marketing 101. Maybe they think (or even have evidence to
support) that a specific demography has a higher conversion rate. For example,
the reasoning might be that there are more programmers amongst younger people.
It would then be inefficient to advertise to other groups.

Sure, there is a grey area here, but the intent might not be as malevolent as
implied.

~~~
wccrawford
I think they'd have to be pretty stupid not to realize the effect of their
choice here. I'm all for Occam's Razor, but this is stretching that line
pretty thin.

------
joshfraser
The only justice in this is that we all get old.

The discriminators will learn what it feels like someday.

------
OliverJones
100 years ago the letters "NINA" were often included in newspaper help-wanted
ads in the USA. Those letters mean "no Irish need apply."

Now FB has figured out a better way to handle help-wanted ad market
segmentation.

They've also, basically, guaranteed that they will be regulated to bring their
business practices in line with legal norms in the countries where they accept
payment.

------
tomvon
Exclude? I would think people would advertise on Facebook to get employees
over 40. No young people use Facebook.

------
ForrestN
It’s now perfectly clear that Facebook’s business is predicated on its ability
to divide us up. This is already playing out destructively in more and more
visible ways, but imagine all the invisible consequences of these
categorizations.

------
hdjdjnxnxbx
This seems like a problem with how Facebook sells ads, not a problem with the
companies in question. I get weekly offers for interviews from most of these
companies on LinkedIn and I’m pushing 50.

------
thedatamonger
At least there is cubeworld. That guy won't release it till it's perfect :)
... Seriously thou, there should be someone who's job it is is to put these
things into perspective to the suits. bad design does cost money. engineers
aren't MBA's (usually) and are bad at speaking their language (usually). And
the "we're young therefore we know everything about technology" stereotype
needs to go. The world is complicated, it can't be boiled down to buzzwords or
stereotypes.

------
cm2187
In that spirit should companies even be allowed to visit campuses, and have a
graduate recruitment program? After all recruiting straight out of university
means recruiting younger people.

~~~
walshemj
Recruiting for experience or lack of experience is allowable but for example a
few years back to keep the DHSS happy and to keep receiving benefits I went to
an "Apprentice role" at HMGCC at Hanslope Park :-).

The idea was that HR might think I was over qualified but think I might be
worth suggesting for other roles. - BTW this was an avowed role so I am not
breaking the OS act

Yes that is the one mentioned in the Laundry files

------
opticalflow
So, I wonder how many ad placements were made by these companies that
specifically targeted experienced talent OVER 40 years of age? I'm going to
guess a big, fat, zero.

------
pm24601
To anyone who thinks this action is o.k. - just remember you will end up older
and discriminated against, rich and discriminating, or dead at an early age.

1 and 3 are much more likely than 2.

------
trhway
i guess it is time to setup an FB profile where i'm a forever 20smthing with
interests in ... what are youngsters these days interested in?

~~~
walshemj
Popular Beat Combos I Believe :-)

------
ChicagoDave
I highly doubt this is the only avenue of age discrimination. At 54, my
interview process this year was vastly different than in the past.

I honestly felt like the token old-person interview and no one had any
intention of recommending me for a job.

The hiring people are all younger and looking for fun coworkers to hang out
with and definitely don't want to work with people bogged down with
experience.

------
losteverything
So i place a classified ad in Chinese Daily News but not one in the Daily
News.

Am i discriminating against non chinese workers?

Im not a FB fan but this isn't discrimination if i, as the buyer of the ad,
don't want my ad to go to any group. Do i want to place my ad for a day care
help to any FB member that may have a criminal record or keeps track of megans
law?

We just have too much information now.

~~~
patricklynch
No, because the fact that I'm neither Chinese nor likely to read Chinese Daily
News doesn't actually prevent me from seeing your ad.

If you posted "Help Wanted" flyers in the middle of a college campus for a
part-time cashier job, some 52 year old could--in theory--be walking by the
quad on his way to a Frisbee golf game.

It's when you explicitly add in logic to filter out a protected class that you
may be in trouble.

~~~
losteverything
But the ad is targeting. Ads always target.

So if this is indeed true then FB should simply splash enough protected
classes to chalk off the requirement. That should not be hard.

We have this really great machine to reach people. FB is just one way to
attract talent. Why ruin it

Remember, FB is voluntary

~~~
patricklynch
I don't think it works that way. If you add logic that says:

"here's group A, who we really want to target, and here's group B, the
protected class we want to exclude. throw 10% of all impressions at group B so
we're not violating federal law."

Then I think you may still be breaking the law. Because you're explicitly
favoring one group over another. Whether the ratio is 100%/0% or 90%/10%
probably doesn't affect the underlying legal problem.

> Why ruin it

At some point many years ago society latched on to the idea that "equal
opportunity employment" was a civil right worth protecting with federal law.
One of the major draws of facebook, if you happen to be an employer not wholly
committed to this idea, seems to be that you kind of have a way to effectively
bypass it. There are people who would equate "ruining facebook" in this
scenario with "protecting fundamental civil rights," which is more important
than creating a favorable environment for recruiters.

That's more or less the argument I think.

------
rdiddly
Facebook already excludes older workers just by being the kind of terrible
user experience older people are sick of dealing with!

------
indymike
Advertising is a tool. One person can use it to discriminate. Another can use
it to invite diversity into the organization.

------
itsybitsyspider
I think one of the reasons is because fluid intelligence declines as people
get older - it's maybe an unpopular and uncomfortable, but still, a scientific
fact proven by many psychological studies. If I was an employer, I'd
definitely prefer someone who's at the peak of their intellectual
capabilities.

~~~
zerr
I believe "fluid intelligence" (whatever you mean) is similarly important in
other fields such as architecture, civil and other engineering, carpentry, art
as well as academia, military and governance, etc... no?

~~~
itsybitsyspider
By "fluid inteligence" I meant (after wikipedia)

> Fluid intelligence or fluid reasoning is the capacity to reason and solve
> novel problems, independent of any knowledge from the past.

I'm not saying that isn't not important in the disciplines you just mentioned.
I _think_ however, that it's more important when you work on something that is
meant to be "disruptive". I don't think that for example carpentry necessarily
belongs to the same job category.

------
vfc1
The best way to avoid this altogether is to start your own Internet business
way before hitting 50. Why would you still want to be working for someone else
at that age?

Being an employee is not the only way to earn a living, internet
entrepreneurship is a very realistic alternative, and a much better life in
general.

~~~
PopsiclePete
And everyone who starts a business is successful at it?

~~~
vfc1
No, but I think the failure rate of starting a business is deformed by the
startup culture.

A small business of one person plus a couple of part-time assistants is much
more likely to work than a 20 person company, there's a spectrum to it and the
95% failure rate gulps everything together.

What'qs the worst it can happen. You try for one year, doesn't work and back
to the corporate world.

------
fpisfun
I would do this before I deleted my Facebook account when I ran ads not to
intentionally exclude people but because I figured people over a certain age
probably wouldn't know the technologies I was looking for and I figured I
would probably end up paying for false positive ad clicks

~~~
loeg
> because I figured people over a certain age probably wouldn't know the
> technologies I was looking for

This is _precisely_ the kind of age discrimination the law is intended to
prevent.

~~~
iak8god
Yep. I was hoping that sentence would end with "because I figured people over
a certain age probably wouldn't _be interested in entry-level positions_ ,"
and I was prepared to think that was an interesting point.

~~~
Consultant32452
Why would that be any less discriminatory?

~~~
iak8god
It wouldn't really, but it would be significantly less douche-y, because it
would ultimately be based in a less disparaging view of older job seekers.

~~~
fpisfun
It is factual that certain technologies are more used by certain demographics.
If someone has a very small ad budget I don't understand why they should be
forced to display ads to a demographic less likely to know the technology.

------
danschumann
I wonder if they thought of it in this light.. or if they just imagined who
they wanted and targeted specifically TO them, as opposed to AGAINST older
folks. In the law's eyes, it's the same thing, however. Something to remember
if you're ever buying ads for hiring.

------
armandososa
As I approach 40, I'm so scared that nobody would hire me whenever I have to
look for work again.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
So, is anyone else wondering what will happen when the current crop of young
people grow older? When everyone who's young enough to be employable now gets
into their 40s and 50s, what's going to happen then?

------
EADGBE
What's the likelihood of multiple ads targeting multiple groups, probably with
different photos? Did they investigate that, or just draw conclusions from one
25-36 y.o.'s Facebook account?

------
Bombthecat
I talked to a Co worker quit awhile about that.

I didn't wanted to buy a house, because of job insecurity. He told me that
this is not a problem. Old people will get jobs in the future without any
problem...

Yeah...

------
netheril96
The comments here seemly to be focused on tech companies not recruiting the
old. But the example in the article is actually a position of financial
analysts.

------
poulsbohemian
It's anecdata, but if I ask my teen daughter, Facebook is for older people,
and the kids are all using things that I've never even heard of. So not sure
how you can really prove discrimination. There is some demographic skewing if
you advertise on Facebook vs. other channels, but not sure you can really call
it an age issue. Not sure what to make of the social marketing guy in the
article -- seems like if you are looking for a social marketing person, then
Facebook would be a logical place to advertise...

~~~
mulmen
Facebook knows the age of the people it displays ads to. Part of their value
proposition is that you can use this data to show certain ads to people of a
certain age. In the case of job postings this is explicitly illegal
discrimination. The average age of Facebook users is completely unrelated.

~~~
poulsbohemian
>The average age of Facebook users is completely unrelated.

No it isn't -- to make an extreme point, if 100% of the audience is > 50 years
old, it wouldn't matter which age group you are _targeting_ because your
target demographic _isn 't there_. The poster below, who points to younger
generations fleeing Facebook are exactly in line with my point -- the
20-somethings are on to Insta-chat-whatevers next. If you really wanted to
discriminate by age, you'd go there instead. That stated -- of course if the
advertisers are setting their ads to only show to certain age groups, then
they are discriminating -- but that's true regardless of the medium.

For what it's worth, I'm not on any of these social networks, unless HN
counts. And yes, my life is better for it.

~~~
mulmen
1) Less than 100% of the audience (Facebook users) are > 50 so your point is
irrelevant.

2) The issue is not _targeting_ , the issue is _exclusion_. If the ads are
targeting based on _age_ then _only_ members of a certain age group see the
ads. This also means anyone outside that group does _not_ see the ads which
means they were _excluded_ based on their age. Combined with the ad content
being a job this is illegal discrimination based on age.

3) The specific nature of the algorithm is irrelevant to the effect.

------
tboyd47
So what does this mean for people who don't have a Facebook or any kind of
social media presence? Do they get excluded as well?

------
sandov
I don't use Facebook, should I feel discriminated against too?. Can't I put a
job ad in a magazine about things that only young people care about? Isn't
that discrimination too?.

First, I don't think that discrimination by private companies is bad, and even
if you try to forbid it, there's always going to be a way around it, and it's
going to be hard to draw a line and say "this is where discrimination starts".

------
coding123
I guess I have two takes on this:

1) Does this mean my local strip club will now have to hire 90 year olds? 2)
Ignoring that joke for now - if pro-publica released this information we now
have information that harm has been caused. And actually couldn't this be an
indication that possibly billions of dollars of damage has been done... what's
next?

~~~
c3534l
Technically the stripper rents the stage, the club doesn't hire a stripper.

~~~
tluyben2
TIL

~~~
c3534l
Yup. They're "independent contractors" for a variety of legal and tax reasons.

------
python-guy-vt
Joke is on them, only grandparents and mothers of young children use facebook
anymore.

------
mankypro
Laugh while you can monkey boys. That generation built the infrastructure you
rely on daily. Way to pay it forward. Suddenly, they too will turn around and
realize that they're above 40 and not in the preferred demo. It all comes
around in the end. Sometimes the SDN boys need a salty old dog to ask if
anyone has actually looked at the back of GigE interface to see if theres a
cable actually plugged into it :)

~~~
avs733
While at a certain level I can't help but agree with you, I think some self-
reflection is in order.

It is perfectly legal to discriminate against young people but not against
older folks. Those laws were put into place by that generation you reference.

Not to mention that the likely reason to target younger employees is because
they can be paid less for the same job. That is a manifestation of the ongoing
depowering of labor and individual laborers that was again driven by...that
generation.

Sometimes, a group reaps what they sow.

~~~
tensor
How is it legal to discriminate against young people?

~~~
jeremyjh
Well, there is no law against discriminating by age against people who are
below the age of 40.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_Discrimination_in_Employme...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_Discrimination_in_Employment_Act_of_1967)

~~~
Clubber
Hey man, 40 is young!

------
rootlocus
> It is against the law to discriminate against workers older than 40 in
> hiring and recruitment.

So it's ok to discriminate agaist workers younger than 40? How does this work?

~~~
xocyabencl
It's just the way the antidiscrimination law is written. I have a visceral
"that should be unconstitutional or something" reaction when thinking about
it, but then I remember we have age discrimination written into our
constitution.

------
fishmeat
Are there tells of race, sex discrimination?

~~~
stevenwoo
Facebook was already in trouble for allowing people to place ads to whites
only for housing - that is against the law in the USA. And after being
informed of it - despites thousands of software engineers - Facebook was not
capable or not willing to change it.
[https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-advertising-
disc...](https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-advertising-
discrimination-housing-race-sex-national-origin)

------
jldevezas
Consider me excluded. :-)

~~~
slantyyz
I'm rapidly approaching 50 myself, and while I get that what they're doing is
wrong, I'm also not that upset about this either. At my age, I'm not
interested in wasting my time with meat grinders that don't value work-life
balance.

------
vfc1
The best w

------
nickonline
How did they publish an ad with incorrect grammar?

"Here, your more than a number..."

It should be you're

~~~
lysp
Because it was written by their social media team - a hired 20-25yo and not a
40-60yo.

~~~
3chelon
They could do even more age-based filtering if they wrote the ad entirely in
emojis.

------
danjoc
"Young people are just smarter," he said, with a straight face, according to
VentureBeat. "Why are most chess masters under 30?" he asked.

Has Zuckerberg retired yet? He's old now. 33 in fact. He should have passed
the torch to someone smarter. I guess he got old and dumb and forgot.

~~~
Clubber
If he were older at the time, he might have realized that saying something
like that is not only short sighted, but would follow him for the rest of his
life.

I haven't heard him repeat it since.

Of course, when I was young, I said plenty of short sighted, silly things as
well.

~~~
kindatrue
>I haven't heard him repeat it since.

If the dude can afford to hire a $120K/year nanny to teach his kids Mandarin,
he can afford to hire a guy to remind him to never repeat that.

------
ybercyber
Excellent!! Who would meed an old expert in team who have the experience and
knowledge??

Naah, we need new and young blood who do not have any experience.. that's how
we roll!

------
myf01d
if you're 35 yo in tech industry and not owning a small business, you're
almost done unless you have good connections. That's how tech works, nobody
just wants to admit that. tech workers are the diggers of their own graves.

~~~
phil248
I hear this a lot, but I don't see it. A lot of people move in to management
roles, but others just keep writing code.

I also don't see why "owning a small business" is a virtue in and of itself.
Owning a profitable company that doesn't consume my every waking hour would be
great. But that's the exception.

------
kirykl
If the job application doesn't restrict on age, and presumably appears on
their website, advertising for it is not really exclusionary

~~~
kindatrue
Kinda sorta. A consequence of the redlining era in Banking (e.g.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining)),
banks are not supposed to micro-geographically target their advertising.
(So... blocking Florida is find 'cuz you don't have offices in Florida. But
not buying ads for people in Harlem while you target the rest of Manhattan -
not OK.)

So there's precedent for saying that "not including" can be the same as
"excluding".

------
horsecaptin
Don't want to get discriminated against? Stop using services that can't exist
without screwing you, and start paying for services! Create the market which
will then enable others to compete for your dollars!

------
thecompilr
I think that is perfectly legal, ethical and acceptable.

Those companies pay per impression, so they want to maximize the effect of the
ad, and reach as many candidates as possible per each $ they pay FB.

This is just an ad. No one can stop you from applying to a job directly with
the company, irregardless of your age, or any other demographics.

Just another sensational headline.

~~~
jklinger410
People are constantly complaining that Facebook allows you to target ads at
certain people.

Ads have operated this way since their inception, yet critics are finding new
ways to make it seem like Facebook is ruining everything by doing exactly what
any sensible person would do if they ran Facebook.

I am not a huge fan of Facebook. But I feel like this is the same trope as was
hauled out in the "Facebook didn't tell me about my dead friend" post.

I don't respect the downvote I received for this comment. Please argue with me
instead of dismiss me.

~~~
grzm
> _Ads have operated this way since their inception,_

The ability for ads to target individuals while being invisible to others is
something quite new and pernicious. If you advertise on television, your
commercial is seen by everyone watching. If you run an ad in print media,
everyone who has a copy can read it. Individually targeted advertising is ripe
for abuse. If you're interested in reading more how this is really
qualitatively different, I highly recommend reading some of the work by Zeynep
Tufekci
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeynep_Tufekci](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeynep_Tufekci)

~~~
jklinger410
Pernicious as it may be, ads being able to exclude people is a natural
evolution of ads, not something malicious as it has been portrayed often
recently.

In the past it was up to the ad buyer to attempt to exclude people based on
their wits. I want to use site X because it has these people instead of site Y
because it has those people. Totally normal.

Now we are debating on the right to see ads because Facebook has such a
powerful platform.

I am all for the debate, what I am not about is acting like this is something
other-worldly. The impression based ad, the viewership based ad, and
demographics, have worked this way throughout modern history.

Ads have moved from being ostensibly invisible, to literally invisible. That
is the line we're drawing?

~~~
jklinger410
@grzm

If you advertise at Macy's certain people will not see the ad. They may not
know the product even exists. That's what I meant by ostensibly invisible.

To your larger point. I'm having a hard time understanding where the line is
in removing this type of freedom to advertise the way companies want to
because of the affects it might have.

I'm going to have to bow out of this because I haven't made up my mind. I am
certainly enjoying the conversation though.

~~~
grzm
But anyone going to Macy's can see the ad.

Please do read some Tufekci. She does a much better job describing this than I
do (unsurprising, given she's studied it extensively), and I hesitate from
regurgitating her here wholesale. She did a podcast with Sam Harris that I
found illuminating, if you prefer that format.

[https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/persuasion-and-
contro...](https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/persuasion-and-control)

------
conanbatt
Meh, is it really important.

There are many reasons to want younger workers, and there are many reasons you
shouldn't want younger workers. I don't find it necessary for the government
to step in to help one of the highest paid fields in america.

~~~
pcwalton
> There are many reasons to want younger workers, and there are many reasons
> you shouldn't want younger workers. I don't find it necessary for the
> government to step in to help one of the highest paid fields in america.

Would you feel similarly if you replaced "younger" with "gay" or "female"?

~~~
ImSkeptical
I've never really understood this. Some restaurants, or clothing stores, have
wait staff that are all women. In a massage place you can pick the gender of
your masseuse - so surely a massage place that was already well staffed with
one gender would be justified in gender discrimination. If I'm hiring a baby
sitter for my daughter, I'm not going to hire a male person, and I'm sure
there are many similar examples. I get that many times there is no
justification for hiring preferences based on gender, but surely sometimes
there is.

~~~
pcwalton
The article talks about Verizon, Amazon, Goldman, Target, and Facebook, none
of which are known for massage therapy or babysitting.

~~~
ImSkeptical
I intended my comment to be on the topic of the thread I replied to, and not
the subject of the article. I meant that I don't really understand when you
can and can't discriminate based on things.

