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Comment by yardie | Hacker News Reader

Yes. If you are, for example, placing rental or property ads that filter by race, age, or gender that is the official description of it.

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and yet, by having a profile of the user, it is quite possible to "easily" find proxies for the above traits, and target those proxies instead, and thus dodge the legality issue. For example, using income.

Does that really dodge the legal issue?

I thought it had been shown that using proxies to discriminate is still illegal if the intention was to discriminate against a protected class.

It dodges the legal issue if you're very careful with your paper trail and get a sympathetic jury.

You won't get a sympathetic jury. People don't have a lot of empathy for algorithms. Maybe empathy for the people who write them, and then only maybe. But you'll be up against a huge slate of expert witnesses explaining how we already have lots of open sourced methods for teasing out these sorts of indirect indicators.

And if you have an algorithm, that algorithm can be dragged into court itself. The prosecutor can show what happens when inputs are fed into it that are identical except for specific information (age, race, sex).

The paper trail won't matter if your "accidentally" discriminatory policies are not directly related to the position you are hiring for. It is the effect of the employment policies that matter under US law.

> The laws enforced by EEOC prohibit an employer or other covered entity from using neutral employment policies and practices that have a disproportionately negative effect on applicants or employees of a particular race, color, religion, sex (including gender identity, sexual orientation, and pregnancy), or national origin, or on an individual with a disability or class of individuals with disabilities, if the polices or practices at issue are not job-related and necessary to the operation of the business. [0]

[0] https://www.eeoc.gov//laws/practices/

I was under the impression that any kind of "disparate impact" crossed the line of legality regardless of intent

No actually you can’t use such things legally. Discrimination is discrimination no matter how you bury it with indirection.

redlining and similar practices are still usually illegal, although it is probably easier to cover up.

"Dodging" legality issues creates new, and much more exciting for your defense attorney, legality issues.

At which point virtually any targeting criterion is, to some degree, a proxy for criterion targeting a protected class, and targeting at all becomes impossible.

Even by advertising on Facebook in the first place, you could argue they're discriminating against people who don't use Facebook. I'm sure you could find a protected demographic with lower-than-average Facebook usage to support this.

Going one step forward, you can say that any company that advertises on any channel and not on all other possible channels (TV, outdoor, print) is discriminating. If you can prove a gender is watching more TV than the other, then it is gender discrimination.

This entire discrimination thing is crazy. Yes, a company can discriminate intentionally and not accepting or failing certain candidates based on demographics OR it simply chooses where to spend the marketing money for the best impact. Like not advertising a bra to men, not because men don't wear a bra (some may do), but because the impact per dollar of advertising it to men is reduced. Discrimination!!!

First, your argument is completely silly to the point of not being taken seriously.

Now, no one gives a shit about how advertising tampons to women discriminates against men. And no one gives a shit that Axe body spray is targeted to males of a certain demographic. What the government is concerned about is how advertising jobs, housing, and finance can be discriminatory.

If you post an ad for a job that targets exclusively men, you are in violation of the Civil Rights Act (Title IX), and the American Disabilities Act.

If you post an ad for an apartment that targets white males you are in violation of the Housing and Community Development Act and the Civil Rights Act.

If you post an ad for mortgages or other financial vehicles that targets a certain demographic and even certain neighborhoods you are in violation of the Civil Rights Act, and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.

There is no law against marketing bras to women, beers to men, or Cialis to the elderly. Housing, employment, and access to credit are some of the foundational services that the government has deemed any discrimination is bad. There is no one step forward because there is a clear line drawn in the sand that anyone with a basic understanding of these laws will know.

Other commenters have said that disparate impact is enough to trigger liability, so targeting proxy characteristics would not help in that case.

I wonder what would happen if someone found out that Facebook's algorithm was discriminating based on race, age, or gender for any of these categories that are illegal.

Lawsuits, for example

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/03/28/hud-charg...

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