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Comment by grayhatter | Hacker News Reader

I think any company should be able to target ads by age. The Ad a teenager would click on is different than one a 40something would click on. Ads are expensive, so it makes sense to target the ad to make it relevant to the user.

Facebook clearly does have a bug here, where they didn't warn the ad buyer that they were excluding an age range. Someone operating in good faith could have one ad for 18-29, another for 31-40, and one for 41 and up. According to the 'outrage' this is highly illegal. But clearly a simple mistake, an off by one error if you would :D. Facebook knows you don't want to excluded anyone, so they should warn about the excluded age range. No matter where it shows up.

Also, is advertising to (demographic) most likely to buy your service really exclusion/discrimination? To the level of a crime? I'm unconvinced I agree it should be.

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>Also, is advertising to (demographic) most likely to buy your service really exclusion/discrimination?

Hi! I work at a bank, that specializes in Credit Cards. I take a bunch of mandated training. The answer to your question is a

RESOUNDING YES

It is DEFINITELY discrimination for me to exclude Black people from lending money, or from OFFERING (aka advertising) to lend money. It is discrimination for me to offer different rates to Seniors than non seniors. It is discrimination for me to offer different TYPES (think: low APR with annual fee) of credit cards to poor people.

I'm not sure if FB should be in trouble, but the credit card issuer will have to explain this to the regulators.

How is any advertising for credit products legal, then? Each TV channel you might advertise on will have known-to-you differences in how often particular demographics will view it, which in principle means that you're excluding someone. While sure, a 35 year old professional might be watching soap operas at 1pm on a Wednesday, it's far more likely to be a senior, so advertising then excludes the non-retired demographic.

Good question! Discrimination can pop up at many points throughout the on boarding process, so it is important that you check who your people are often and at multiple check points.

At the point of advertising, we check things like: demographics of who viewed the add (sometimes we have to run ADDITIONAL targeted adds to balance out an initial add placement), demographics of who "clicked" to our website, demographics of who applied

Are all possible places to monitor. Also, we get to use FUN MATH!

That sounds like something maybe 0.1% of credit card issuers actually do.

Hmmm... ok. The antidote I shared is when I was hanging out with the mortgage folks. I assumed it was applied to the credit card division. It is surely possible, and an acceptable solution.

The mortgage bit is the key there. Red-lining started out as a phenomena in mortgage offerings, so it makes sense that they'd be going over and above to keep their noses clean. Credit cards as a general thing though? Nah. Though I'd be stoked to see that change in the years to come.

Isn’t discriminating by age okay in insurance policies?

Life insurance is higher for older people. Drivers insurance is higher for younger people as well as for men, no?

So it seems there are exceptions.

discriminating by age is ok in the workplace. only 40+ is a protected class in the US.

Yes, but not for reason of age alone.

Creditworthiness is judged based on history, not on age or race etc. I.e. egalitarianism.

If your history is bad, lower limit etc.

I dunno. Life insurance is heavily weighted for age, all other things being equal.

It’s not discrimination — pricing is based on cost, actuarial risk in the case of life insurance. There are even pooled models where otherwise too risky people can get insurance.

Discrimination comes in when you make decisions or steer business based on a protected attribute. If you do a mailing and exclude ethnic Jewish names, that’s discrimination. If you advertise in a catholic church bulletin, but not at a synagogue, that isn’t.

I just applied for private life insurance. I do think it's possible what this industry does as a matter of standard practice probably is discrimination, but they legitimize it through technocratic means. They'll say something like there's an average risk profile that rises over time with age. The way they further meat this out is by intrusively inspecting open medical history and repeating pedantic questions to you about that medical history. If you pass the pedantic questions, you get a lower rate based on demonstrated medical history.

So, I think my perception would be a little bit of both.

So if I choose not to advertise a credit product during NBA games which have a high black audience, but advertise during soccer games high white viewership, is that discrimination?

I think you certainly correct if someone applies directly excluding them on race is not only violation of law, but a jerk move. This seems more like it has to do with intention than actual execution.

I have NO idea! I know some financial institutions advertise (and sponsor) really big sport events with viewership that ranges in the 10s of millions. It is possible there is a distinction between "We are a company, remember our logo" and "we are a company, use our credit card".

I do know that proxy variables are just as bad as discrimination variables. So, if I approve based on zip code, and zip code is highly correlated with a protected class - that is not legal (think: red lining practices).

But it gets tricky. If black people use pay day lenders, can I decline because I see pay day lenders on your credit history? Not directly, but I can decline if I see lots of "open lines of credit" or "delinquent loans".

In my area, we also go back over our variables to look for "accidentally discrimination" e.g. no one would expect that: high income, large down payment, expensive car loan, commission based income would correlate with a protected class - but maybe it does, so we better check!

> or from OFFERING (aka advertising) to lend money.

Nearly every financial "advertising" I see/hear has "this is not an offer to lend" disclaimer on it. I can't see that 'advertising===offering'???

"This is not an offer to lend" is a disclaimer that the ad isn't itself an offer to extend credit to whoever happens to see it - you have to apply and be approved first and they don't guaranteed they will offer you any lending products at all. It's usually followed up by language like "subject to credit approval."

sure, but the OP was suggesting that "advertising" was the same as "offering" to anyone who happens to see the ad (in context of discrimination) ... doesn't seem to be usable.

> It is discrimination for me to offer different rates to Seniors than non seniors. It is discrimination for me to offer different TYPES (think: low APR with annual fee) of credit cards to poor people.

Accounts are often free to young people(<26)in Belgium, as well as in other European countries. Is that not discrimination?

A couple of points:

I'm an American, with experience in the US

Illegal Discrimination is determined by the jurisdiction you are in. Belgium will have different laws than than the US

Laws typically PROTECT vulnerable populations. Young people might be correlated with poor and uninformed, and there by entitled to protections. Likewise, Seniors may also correlate with underemployed and mentally impaired, and there by entitled to protections.

Note also that there is an important difference between the two scenarios:

1) 2 IDENTICAL products, but one is FREE 2) 2 SIMILAR products, but one exchanges convenience for cost

In the first example (similar to your example), one is DEFINITELY better (the free one), and CAN be targeted to people- because it is DEFINITELY better

In the first example (similar to my credit card), neither is DEFINITELY better than the other - it is a little more complex! And we have a higher burden showing that it is OK to offer JUST one to a protected class.

How do we begin to dismantle these systems?

The idea that a law or regulation would prevent you from advertising based on demographics is absurd, and we should build a future without these kinds of insane dependencies.

There are protected classes by law. If anything the trend has been to extend them.

Advertising is a bit funny of course. If we're talking about magazine advertising, for example, there's nothing keeping you from advertising in a magazine that's overwhelmingly read by women, wealthy white guys, or black people. However, the law frowns on explicitly targeting (or excluding) a protected class.

I don't think we should dismantle them. I agree with others in this thread that not offering an option is exclusion. Because excluding people from important things like banking or housing leads to a worse society. And because people have excluded [group] before in an attempt to limit the reasonable risk of doing business in society. Laws are required to prevent that kinda behavior.

I don’t think any ad company should be able to target people based on their age. I think ad companies should be able to target based on their context. If the context is primarily younger people then you’ll hit your market, but won’t exclude the odd older person that is also interested.

What about recreational drugs (incl tobacco and alcohol), gambling, adult entertainment, etc? Surely those should not be targeted at minors.

vice advertising is typically regulated in a different manner, excluding minors for example

Generally, targeting minors is treated differently in discrimination cases as a whole.

> What about recreational drugs (incl tobacco and alcohol)

Alcohol and tobacco advertising is banned or massively regulated in most countries. Facebook circumvents rules in various places due to their media platform being newer than the rules or because Facebook just sort of ignores the rule.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_of_nicotine_marke... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_advertising https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/28/1/67

Facebook's ad policies prohibit all tobacco advertising, and alcohol advertising targeting users under 18

When it comes to ads, HNers will make up anything and believe anything, while refusing to do the most basic research.

What’s made up?

It’s not hard to find good sources stating Facebook still advertise tobacco, though you appear not to have noticed the links stating this fact. Here are some more recent links.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/mar/17/british-ame...

https://www.independent.co.uk/health_and_wellbeing/big-tobac...

The headline and byline from your links:

“British American Tobacco circumventing ad ban”

“Smoking giants are flouting rules set by Facebook and Instagram”

As always, regardless of the digital or print medium, Big Tobacco (& others) have always tried to flout the rules. Same goes for Alcohol and Gambling ad bans.

What is incorrect about those statements? FB are paying influencers to advertise tobacco on Facebook and Instagram.

Yes, it’s proving hard to enforce a ban, but are we supposed to be sympathetic to Facebook?

The article states that they moved of the ads platform. If people pose with a cigarette and it's allowed by content guidelines of the platform and country, would you expect to have it censored? If I post a picture that I am smoking you think they should delete it cause I'm advertising it?

It rather changes the equation if you are paid by a tobacco company to hold a cigarette in a photo.

‘On Instagram, Big Tobacco’s influencers post glamorised images of vape products with hashtags such as #idareyoutotryit and captions such as “feeling Vype AF”.’ (From my link).

Fair point. I know they have 'paid partnership' annotation in posts. I didn't notice they are circumventing that.

While technically what you say appears to be true, Facebook's actions still violate the spirit of avoiding that type of advertising in my opinion. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/28/facebook-...

That’s why I included the last link. Facebook have said the right things but kept doing what they want - this has been the pattern with other things they have done too.

https://www.independent.co.uk/health_and_wellbeing/big-tobac...

Why is using age to approximate context worse than using some other factor to approximate it?

Why? I understand the argument for restricting access to things needed to function (housing, banking, etc). But I made a flashy twitch shooter. Why is it wrong for me to advertise by age?

Ads cost money, why is it in the public good that I spend money to bother people with ads they'll never take part in?

I would turn it around the other way.

Often on OTA TV you see nothing but ads for "old people" products, not just things that "old people dig" (Black Sabbath?) but for things aimed at the indignities of age (adult diapers, ...) as well as the people who will file a fake medicare claim on your behalf,...

You could easily got the whole day and see mostly ads for things you could spend government services on, lawyers who might help you if you are hit by a car (and you have a slam dunk case) -- the one thing you might see advertised that people spend their own money on is cars. I guess if they didn't have any cars nobody would get hit by a car and need a personal injury lawyer. Scam and near-scam financial services targeted at the elderly is another big theme.

Add that up and if you're under 50, TV sends messages that "I want to die before I get old", "everybody else is just out to chisel from the government", etc. It makes me wonder if taking Grandma's phone away so she can't get scammed is worth her not being able to call 911.

Because there is no ad targeting by age on TV, TV is flooded by old people ads that drive away even a middle aged audience. By the time we get old we won't be watching TV because of it. If TV had age-targeted ads it might be tolerable to watch again.

That’s not a feature of targeting, but of declining audience. There’s enough injured people watching TV in waiting rooms that structured settlement ads have a ROI.

The reality is that you could easily segment the tv audience in the 80s and 90s. There was a time when dudes would tune into Wheel of Fortune to gawk at Vanna White. CNN once attracted a high end audience.

Likewise, the ads on the Spider-Man Saturday cartoon, GI-Joe, Dr Quinn Medicine Woman, and Nightline were very different, and targeted by age.

Exactly. I get so many "Seniors don't know they can get this benefit" adverts, that I wouldn't mind if they got replaced with something more targeted

I think ads are an euphemism for spam and deserve the same legal status.

The world would certainly be a better place without ads.

What about paid reviews? Are there any types of marketing you don't think is harmful?

> I think any company should be able to target ads by age.

I think private companies should not exist and advertisement should be strictly illegal as a mass manipulation technique.

Profit and the engineering of consent are the explanation why people are starving or sleeping on the streets despite there being an abundance of resources to be wasted by companies and rich people.

I wouldn't go so far, but I did always think it was funny economist like to stipulate how markets work with "rational actors", failing to acknowledge just how much advertising (an utterly massive industry) drives people away from being rational actors.

Rational actors can still be deceived or wrong. It doesn't cease to make them rational to think smoke coming from the hills means a fire. It also explains how price manipulation techniques can work, such rising prices causing people to rush out and buy before it rises further. More reasons why false advertising is an offense along with the fights sparked by pissed off customers and fraud adjacency.

Beating up on rational actors on is a pretty tired take akin to deriding psychiatry because of Freud's Oedipus Complex. Which is ignoring the contextually it made sense with what we now know as Westermarcke effect combined with the norms of his time. His privledged son clients, being upper class were raised by nannies as the norm. Now put yourself in the proverbial Oedipus's shoes and imagine richer person who rules over you and directs your life direction and has sex with a hot woman you are attracted to. Sounds understandable except that they are your father and mother. With the lack of bonding in the life style it is both more consistent with modern proven effects and showing how society's twisted norms deeply screwed people up.

Wow, that escalated quickly. And this may be a hot take deserving of more thought... but I don't think companies existing is why there is homelessness nor general food insecurity. I think it' more than likely there's another, more important factor in play.

I think companies should only be able to target by site. For instance if you sell tires, you should buy advert on a car forum. All other forms of targeting is a manipulation and should be illegal along with any form of tracking.

Who even uses dedicated forums anymore? Outside Hacker News and subreddits, the only one I somewhat infrequently visit is xda-developers and that's it.

Then a Facebook group for car owners. Facebook then should split proceeds with the group admins.

This seems absurd. Why should the group admins get paid when the value is generated by the community?

A value is also, and not to a small part, generated by the group admins and moderators - which is also why there have been a fair share of controversies regarding subreddits whose mods sold out (e.g. r/wallstreetbets).

Fostering a community is hard work... kicking out spammers, fraudsters and peddlers of illegal material (cp and DMCA), dealing with trolls and shills, directing newbies to useful resources for example. Without moderation (or too lax moderation criteria) your forum will end up overrun with legally questionable material (4chan, 8chan, 8kun), alt-right conspiracy theories (Parler, gab.ai), porn (r/worldpolitics) or questionable "advice" (r/legaladvice).

The problem is that moderating content is rarely positively rewarded - HN with the constant praise of u/dang for their moderation work is the example proving the rule. You're too lax? Users complain that the community is "devolving" from its purpose. You're too strict? People will raise off-site shitstorms or run organized brigading attacks.

This is why group admins deserve to be compensated for their efforts (and in the case of FB mods, way more compensation given the constant onslaught of cp, gore and other extremely vile stuff).

They manage the community, if you have unmoderated groups you get 4chan and similar which no-one wants to advertise on.

Also it incentivises moderating groups rather than just letting them be and doing the bare minimum.

I still don't like the idea but entirely for the reason that it adds financial incentives to demand moderators force groups to be advertiser friendly in more ways than just removing toxic content. If advertisers don't like something it will simply be neglected in comparison to the more advertising relevant ideas.

You do realise this is the exact argument that Facebook themselves make when people say 'the value is generated by the community' yet FB rake in billions?

Facebook argue for paying their community moderators?

Why should Facebook get paid when the value is generated by the community?

It sounds like you use dedicated forums then

People who are willing to put up with reduced volume and velocity of content in exchange for content not all being targeted at the absolute bottom of the barrel like you get on "mass market" platforms that attempt to cater to every niche and allow the internet riff raff into every niche in the process.

The set of people who visit a car forum is very different to the set of people who need to buy tires for their car.

If you want to increase awareness of your innovation, you might want to target exactly those people who aren't car hobbyists and don't visit car forums. Same if you are selling a product specifically designed to be easy to use for non-experts.

So ads on Facebook would only be about... social media?

Ads on Google would only be about web searches generally? Like crawlers, and database performance?

Instagram should only show ads for photo-taking equipment?

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