Facebook's sexist, ageist ad-targeting violates Calif. law, court finds | Hacker News Reader

Facebook's sexist, ageist ad-targeting violates Calif. law, court finds

arstechnica.com

43 pointsMandieD19 comments

Talk about an opinionated headline. If you read TFA, the word "alleges" is used quite often, but the headline itself is not only an indictment of guild, but framed in such a way as if it's an obvious and known fact that Facebook's ad targeting is both sexist and ageist.

But let's back up a second. Facebook isn't doing the targeting; the advertisers are. Facebook is providing a tool not unlike those found on other ad networks. Demographic targeting is how practically all ads are done, and age and sex are probably the two biggest. This type of targeting isn't refusal of service to protected classes.

Is it California's stance that advertisers must now waste money advertising to groups who, by definition, have zero interest in the products advertised? Because of this ruling, will teen boys now have to see ads for menopause support supplements?

I loathe Facebook. I hate advertising. But this ruling is absurd, and I expect it will be overturned on appeal.

Regarding the headline, arstechnica A/B tests headline variations and then eventually settles on a winner. The more clickbaity headline ALWAYS wins.

Completely speculating here, but I’d guess the authors write reasonable headlines and then some editor picks a terrible reformulation.

Sometimes (as in this case) you can see what the losing title was by looking at the URL: facebook-targeting-ads-by-age-gender-violates-calif-anti-discrimination-law

Much more reasonable, which is why it got less engagement and lost.

Enshittification is such a cruel thing. Arstechnica was a quality site at one point… not to say it has completely lost its value, but it’s sad to see the its decline, nonetheless.

Just remember that the >10x reduction in journalism revenue due to the loss of classifieds is responsible for this.

All the $ went to ad tech companies and this loss of revenue has meant a race to the bottom in terms of talent and resources.

This isn’t quite accurate. The ad tech companies are finishing them off, but Craigslist is what started this process.

It’s not just the headline. The first paragraph of the article is substantively wrong. The trial court granted FB’s motion to dismiss, finding that the plaintiff didn’t state a cognizable claim under California law. The appellate court reversed, ruling that—as a legal matter—the allegations could make out a claim for a violation of law. The court didn’t “find” it violates the law, it sent the case back to the trial court to make that determination.

The plaintiff is complaining about not being served ads? The damage alleged is that they “had a harder time learning about those products or services”. Is there some framing that makes this not insane?

As a side note, what prevents competitors from bankrolling lawsuits of this nature?

Sure, ads suck. But it's not hard to imagine special deals/discounts only being targeted to specific audiences by age and gender.

I imagine some demographic groups are probably more lucrative to advertise to, for various reasons (e.g., they have more money to spend, tend to spend more, etc.). So the less-lucrative demographics will accordingly be cheaper, which would appear to be a "discount".

To go back to old-fashioned on-air TV, the ad slots after midnight were, I'm sure, much cheaper than the ones during prime-time.

I'm wondering the same thing: in what way is the provider of a service legally obligated to tell everyone about it? As long as they provide the actual service without bias to all who inquire, shouldn't it be up to them to decide how (and to whom) to advertise?

Kind of interesting legal argument here. Instead of setting up an ad as a “cost” to use the service, the opportunity for a discount from an ad could be construed as a benefit or advantage. If that advantage is only given to certain classes, that seems to be discriminatory under this California law.

CA courts have ruled that “ladies’” discounts are discriminatory[1] under this law. This seems similar except instead of explicitly marketing it publicly as “men’s discount on insurance”, the discount is secretly only being offered to men or certain ages.

https://law.justia.com/cases/california/supreme-court/3d/40/...

Google also allows you to target ads to specific ages and sexes.

Pretty much any ad platform does. Prior to the online age, list rental agencies would let you filter by those attributes. I remember an old manager adding Republicans in affluent zip codes to his catalog mailing.

I think that many people don't understand how customer information is brokered. This isn't new, just recently greatly expanded upon.

The court ruled that the alleged facts, if true, would mean the plaintiff has a case.

This isn't a final ruling, but a reversal of the trial court's dismissal of the case.

IANAL but as a layperson it seems like a stretch to say that not being served ads by a business is equivalent to being refused service.

This may open the door to suing people who use sexist, ageist filters on dating apps.

That seems... redundant. For this law to apply, the person would have to be using dating-site filters to find matches as customers for a business.

If that's already the case, then it's either prostitution (for which laws usually already exist) or at least a scenario where the site-owner should/would ban the account when people complain that their "coffee date" was a lie that turned into a sales pitch.

I don't think so. Sexism and ageism are not illegal in general, just in commercial contexts[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unruh_Civil_Rights_Act

Wow, that is not what this is even this ruling is saying.

Literally the only thing being said here is "this lawsuit is not obviously frivolous", and presenting it as such is piss poor reporting that Ars should be embarrassed to presumably be paid to publish.

The degree of hyperbole in this is in line with the mass media astroturfing McDonald's and similar engaged in for the "hot coffee" and similar lawsuits.

That it is starting this early - at the point where a court has only said that dismissing this lawsuit without a trial was a faulty judgement - just reeks of that kind of BS.

She actually alleged that she was harmed because she was not shown ads that insurance targeted to young men.

Sometimes, discrimination based on age is a good thing.

So long as the law pretends otherwise, there will be stupid court decisions as a result.

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