Can you explain why you think this?
This is actually a thorny problem.
Say you have an advertising system that knows nothing about a user’s gender. This system, by construction, cannot vary its ad selections based on gender. But the system does remember whether users have expressed interest in the ads it has previously shown them.
Now say you have a job that in general appeals to one gender almost exclusively. The system will, given time, learn which users are interested in ads for this job. Those users will just happen to be almost exclusively of one gender.
If the ad system stops showing ads for this job to the users who have demonstrated they don’t want to see them, is that gender discrimination?
One can make an argument either way. But either way, it’s not going to be a clear-cut argument. There’s some subtlety required.
Sounds like a win to me.
No, because they demonstrated intent. However, if the ad system extrapolates this behavior to users which previously have not interacted with such ads strictly selecting only users of certain gender, it will be gender-based discrimination.
According to US employment law, yes, actually. That is something called disparate impact (unintentional discrimination), and it is illegal in the same way disparate treatment (intentional discrimination) is.
If the law is nonsensical or harmful, it can and should be changed.
Still a yes from me. I see no reason to change the law to prevents people from being discriminated against in employment opportunities, And that was implied in my comment. I was not “fobbing” to the current laws, I was saying, this is illegal and for good reason.
Whether intentional or not, you cannot advertise a job to only certain people based on targeting by a protected characteristic.
You may not like it, but you haven’t proven to me that the law is nonsensical. I’m actually a little skeptical you are able to describe the current law you wish to change - see: Chesterton’s Fence.
To clarify, my question was specifically about the case where you could prove that the ad system could not possibly target based on a protected characteristic (gender, in this example). The only thing the ad system could learn is a user's interest in ads for a job.
An ad system like this will show more ads to the people who are interested in them and less to the people who are not. In the case when there is a genuine difference in job interest along gender lines, the "more interested" and "less interested" groups will just happen to have different gender profiles.
So my question was: In these circumstances, if the system gives more ads for the job to the people who want them and less to the people who do not, is that gender discrimination?
EDITED TO ADD: To further clarify: I think you're arguing that if there are observable differences in job ad rates along gender lines, then it follows that the ad system is, in fact, targeting based on gender. I constructed this example to rule out that possibility: The ad system cannot target -- or take any action -- based on gender. All it knows is which users are interested in ads for a job.
Is Facebook selecting the targeted groups or delivering ads to them?
Unless somebody says explicitly "no women", there is no discrimination in my opinion.
At some point, we have to face the fact that there are two kinds of freedom: The freedom TO something-or-other, and the freedom FROM something-or-other. And the two are often in tension, requiring actual judgment calls and weighing of values, because there is no one perfectly crafted set of objective rules to sort that mess out.
Some people care about the freedom from algorithms not showing them ads for jobs they are qualified to do and pay better, but the companies would prefer the freedom TO primarily hire whomever they please and advertise to whomever they please. Those two freedoms are in tension.
If the freedom from gender discrimination in the marketplace freedom doesn't matter to you, or matters les than the freedom for someone else TO advertise only to men, well, I can see that you are consistent in your beliefs of things I deeply disagree with.
Because interaction goes both ways. A big influencer on women not being interested could be a societal expectation that is not a job for them, which you’re unknowingly reinforcing.
This is particularly important when it’s not “mechanic jobs” but “senior jobs” for example. Only male workers being “proposed” leadership positions over time leads to a statistically significant imbalance.
You have however written a thing here that’s fine - it’s totally fine if your advert is seen more by men. But what you want, and what we as a society generally want, is for those ads to be shown to likely candidates regardless of gender. Given two equally qualified people, do you want your ads to only be shown to one of them, because the other is a woman? I assume not because you want to hire th best person not the best man.
The issue isn’t that the ads are shown to more men because they target things like “has said they have worked as a mechanic and are looking for a job” and that happens to be more for men, the accusations is that Facebook is specifically using your gender to determine what job adverts to show you.
Ie. No content recommendations on reddit, tikok, facebook, youtube, amazon, twiter, etc.
The challenge is to compel belief that unequal gender distribution across professions creates a systemic harm.
This also only ever goes in one direction. A friend of mine works for a company run by and employs 100% women.
In any other context, it would be illegal. Instead, it's considered 'diverse' and 'empowering'.
Based on statistics alone, it's obvious the company is hiring women based on choice.
Tech companies, like Duo, touted the fact that they had all women development teams a few years back. When discrimination like this is an accepted practice, I stop listening.
Policies like that are based on results of psychological research such as "stereotype threat", which has recently fallen victim to the reproducibility crisis.
In other words, the entire social engineering structure of such laws may be a house built on sand.
If it's NOT harm, then it should be legal for job boards to only show positions to the desired gender, right?
Scope matters. On the level of the entire economy? Possibly yes, but you haven't shown that the entire economy will discriminate against X or Y; respective preferences of individual players may well balance out.
On the level of a single Acme, Inc.? What if that particular organization is unofficially hostile to a particular gender? I would say that in such case, it is more harmful to join it blindly and then suffer from the generally unfriendly environment than to steer clear of them in time.
I wouldn't personally like to become an employee in a corporation that prefers not to employ men and is only forced to do so by external powers. And I would prefer them to be honest and advertise that openly, to save my time and theirs from making an unhappy match.
But it was posted, and apparently that's what matters. So the ads that signpost you to the posting that only [people with special glasses] can see are just peachy.
At least according to “Is It Discriminatory to Advertise Job Opportunities on Facebook?”, https://www.thatcherlaw.com/blog/2022/12/is-it-discriminator...
Also, unless the golf club is discriminating, female golfers are just as able to see the ad -vs- male golfers.
So it's not an individual's revealed preferences, it's a group's revealed preferences. And that's where the discrimination comes in.