How long until the tech giants are held accountable for willfully skirting decades of civil rights legislation.
Kind of like when some insurance co advertises some insurance product and that advert has to go through copy editors and legal to make sure it does not break any laws (representing product faithfully, not making false or dubious claims) before it gets okayed to be published.
In this case HR should consult with legal before putting up job announcements. Or, here specifically these cos should consult with legal before making that job req buy.
In this specific case, the product they are selling is illegal.
Facebook should be held liable for selling illegal advertising.
Do people find this challenging? Is there something wrong with this?
If you created an ad with "over 40 need not apply" most newspapers would reject the ad.
However this case goes over and above. Facebook is actively adding a feature to screen users by age which increases their culpability.
With that example in mind, that puts someone running the ad in a weird place, since literally every ad network in 2017 does demographic targeting.
I don't think it's feasible to vet every ad that runs to ensure that the poster is complying with the law.
All that being said, this smells like Facebook, much like any other popular virtual public square, hiding behind the "We're an open platform!" defense when convenient to avoid legal action, and hiding behind the "We're a private company!" defense when convenient to disclaim accusations of poor or inconsistent moderation. They should not get to have it both ways. Either they exercise editorial control and can be liable for what their users post, or they can keep their hands off and push that liability back to the poster.
Rant aside, I'm more interested in the general case of demographic targeting when it comes to certain ads.
The material difference between newspapers and facebook is that anyone is allowed to buy a newspaper, but someone of a protected class cannot view ads on facebook that are not targeted to them even if they want to, thus they are excluded.
Seems no different than advertising a job in young skewing magazines vs targeting older demos.
If you were seizing on "real world", I think it's pretty clear I meant "physical" rather than "virtual" since we're comparing newspapers to online ads, but I updated the post to clarify.
And I generally agree. The authorities should be going after the perpetrators, not the neutral platform.
The party which should be pursued is the one posting the post which goes contrary to law.
I'm ok if FB or CL proactively root out those posts, but I'm not so sure I see it as their responsibility to do. It's good oversight but still I feel the people who should be punished are the agents of the wrongdoing.
So, no, I don't see them as an accessory to the crime.
That said, the companies/individuals doing the actual discrimination and or illegal solicitation should face the consequences of their actions. In this case, I'm not condoning companies discriminating on the basis of age.
Not calling out Craigslist --simply illustrating that regular tools meant to be used responsibly can be abused to accomplish nefarious ends.
Not saying I disagree with you, many commenters in here are making good points.
Edit: I'm referring to the Facebook ads platform in general, and not specifically job ads. I agree that job ads shouldn't have the option to target age groups.
In this case "ok" means "not made illegal by this law".
What's important here though is that Facebook isn't selling diaper ads, they're selling job ads and so they are discriminating against a protected class.
It doesn't seem much different in this case. Bit methods target young people.
In the magazine case you are taking out an advertisement with no ability to discriminate. In the Facebook case there is a specific setting based on age to show job ads. Job seekers over the age of 40 are protected so this is discrimination against a protected class. The problem is not that young people were targeted, the problem is that those over 40 were not.
The only true way to solve this is to force by law to hire older people (e.g. 30% of your workforce must be over 40); otherwise all this proxies like trying to regulate third-party ads and else its just an endless cat-and-mouse game.
Job ads have no age options allowed.
Fixed.
A US Supreme Court case comes to mind, Batson v Kentucky:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batson_v._Kentucky
In which it became illegal to dismiss a juror based on race. A simple, sensible fix, which most agree did very little to stop race based discrimination from juries. Doing so just became a bit more complicated.
Imagine a drug advert that didn't properly list the drug's side effects. To my mind that would be the advertising company's responsibility, not the TV station or billboard owner's.
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.
Do you think purchasing a few newspapers from the store in the morning is the same thing as having to register multiple accounts on FB just to avoid their age discrimination which you may not be aware is happening in the first place? This also violates their terms of service.
How many accounts do I need: one white, one black, one hispanic, one 20 - 30, one 30 - 40?? where does it end?
It's unethical developers like you that allows this kind of thing to happen.
> Downvoted and rightly so.
> Do you think purchasing a few newspapers from[...]
> How many accounts do I need: one white, one black, one
> hispanic, one 20 - 30, one 30 - 40?? where does it end?
> It's unethical developers like you that allows this
> kind of thing to happen.
You have it backwards. Everyone might not follow this rule, but reddiquette says "Please don't downvote an otherwise acceptable post because you don't personally like it."
While pg thinks it's perfectly fine to use the downvote to express disagreement:
"I think it's ok to use the up and down arrows to express agreement. Obviously the uparrows aren't only for applauding politeness, so it seems reasonable that the downarrows aren't only for booing rudeness."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=117171
> the fact that you're replying at all shows that it's not the latter.
By that logic you should never reply to someone you downvote.
Same with 6am radio - there is nothing stopping under 35s listening (and indeed there will be many that do).
With FB adverts, it is a complete 100% filter if you are outside the demographic range. You have no choice in the matter as to whether you see that material or not.
I have no insight or opinion on the ethical or legal considerations of targeting on demographic data directly, except to say that platforms should give you the option to conceal that data (and all data) from advertisers.
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.
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.
Specifically, it is so common to see evaluations of a reasonable hypothetical counter-example that holds together logically, with an implicit or explicit judgement of the outcome meant to discourage the reader from being too hasty in regarding this new outrage as such.
There is no discussion of the reason such laws exist, or any appreciation of the gravity of breaking these laws, indeed little appreciation for what law is and how it is different from the most up-voted answer on stackoverflow. At a minimum, we should all have respect for the risk of legal jeopardy to ourselves in our professional work, as it is often not the executive or the corporate body that bears the punishment.
2) Newspaper subscribers are not a protected class. Job seekers over the age of 40 are.
The difference with the new systems is that, while I might happen to come across an ad in traditional media because I woke up early or I might happen to be reading a paper I normally don't, there's practically no chance whatsoever for me to accidentally see an ad in Facebook's systems that's not targeted at me. That's a categorically different situation because I'm being explicitly excluded from that content based on factors specified by the employer, not just by luck or personal preference.
Also, the "implicit filtering" of traditional media only passes the bar because it can't actually be proven that the employer is filtering based on age, gender, etc., which isn't the case with an explicit filtering system. Yes, employers can still skirt the system with the traditional media targeting, but they're still illegally discriminating based on age or other factors.
When Facebook decided that they we're going to pick and choose what content people could access, for their own benefit, then they picked up more liability than someone literally broadcasting to everyone in range
1. It is the responsibility of the advertiser to ensure that the advertisement is legal. Facebook is certainly not the employer, nor is it registered or defined as an employment agency, so by the language of the law [1] it does not meet the definition of an applicable party.
2. If the advertisement itself did not _indicate_ any preference based on age, then it may not have violated the law even if it was disseminated according to age.
The second argument is tenuous because (my understanding is that) users could click the ad to plainly see the targeting criteria, but displaying this is not the doing of the employer, which is the only entity to which the language of the law seems to apply.
[1] https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/statutes/adea.cfm "It shall be unlawful for an employer, labor organization, or employment agency to print or publish, or cause to be printed or published, any notice or advertisement relating to employment by such an employer or membership in or any classification or referral for employment by such a labor organization, or relating to any classification or referral for employment by such an employment agency, indicating any preference, limitation, specification, or discrimination, based on age."
Too bad Ulbricht did not have lobbyst working for him.