What about recruiting from all-female schools like Barnard?
It only be an apt analogy to the Universities if Facebook were some single-gender social network. Or if an all-gender University let you only recruit one gender.
But in general, there are classes of ads that you just can't target based on certain classes, period. Even if you hypothetically might have the ability to target a counterbalancing ad somewhere else. Facebook repeatedly has been in hot water over this, and both they and the people using their ad platform to do this stuff need to get more than a slap on the wrist, in order to deter others from trying the same in the future.
I literally take issue with it, as in I don't think it is right. I said nothing about the implications and I certainly don't think someone should be jailed for poor recruiting practices.
But this feels like a blunt instrument for a highly-nuanced issue. If diversity of experience is a core value at Duolingo, why not recruit everywhere and tailor the interviewing process to favor candidates from non-traditional backgrounds?
While they've achieved an important milestone, I'd be very worried about the line of thinking that led to this decision if I were a Duolingo investor. All the diversity in the world doesn't mean much if they can't find a way to keep the lights on.
And in what way is this special treatment?
Companies use a variety of different metrics by which to determine which schools they should recruit from. "We want to increase our diversity" is a reasonable metric to use, and "recruit from colleges with an above-average percentage of people in a minority group we've chosen to view as important" is a reasonable way to accomplish that.
I shouldn't have to point this out, but diversity is more than just a buzzword. Increasing diversity on the development side improves the final product, for a variety of reasons.
Something like this must do ugly things to one's mind and one's perception of self-worth.
Thats a misleading statement.
IMO, The main reason why they did that is because Carnegie Mellon University has more woman than men in its incoming CS classes, and Duolingo wanted an excuse to exclusively recruit from CMU (Which one of the founders teach at, and is strongly associated with).
Facebook is not a single-gender platform.
Saying that "FB is not a single gender platform" is like saying that "Higher education is not a single gender platform".
You're missing their point about using limits on the market supply to discriminate for a job - i.e. even if that job is "open to all", but you've limited applicants to one gender.
HR and legal depts that don't want their company to be sued for violating Title VII will make sure that they aren't recruiting only from Barnard, unless they're some bona fide exception (e.g. hiring models for women's clothing). This idea that they need to recruit from men's only career fairs is your own.
As other commenter pointed out, how is this different from advertising in women/men magazine? Should we ban those as well? Sure, one can argue that their readers are only 98% one gender. But then some people on FB lie about their gender and some browse FB on somebody else's account. E.g. My GF never logs out off Facebook on shared devices and I see ads targeting women all the time.
All in all, we should look at bigger problem of targeted advertising rather exclusive loaded cases. I've no idea what targeted advertising line is "good enough". On the other hand, targeted advertising is definitely causing massive societal problems and political polarisation.