It's not, though. When I buy a page in Cosmo or something, I'm doing that with the intent and result that mostly women will see it. If targeted ads were illegal, it's hard to see how any publication with non-representative demographics could sell ads at all.
> 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]
I am not a lawyer, but I am directly quoting the US Government Agency that is responsible for enforcing these laws.
US employment law prohibits a large number of normally OK employment practices when they have a disparate impact on protected classes.
> For example, an employer's reliance on word-of-mouth recruitment by its mostly Hispanic work force may violate the law if the result is that almost all new hires are Hispanic. [0]
In that case the targeted facebook ads would not be illegal if they were balanced by targeted ads at the groups excluded from the first? Or also not illegal if it can't be proven to have had an actual effect?
Here is how I think about it:
If my intention is to discriminate against men and publish an ad in a female magazine, sure, I cant control if a man buys and sees the ad or not. But discrimination was my intention to begin with regardless of how effective my efforts were. Besides, those efforts will be pretty effective. Instead of magazine advertising being 100% effective - as is in the case of FB targeted advertising - they will be just slightly less effective (lets say 90% or w/e number you want to put here). That´s because in the magazine´s case we know for certain that that vast majority of female magazine consumption is done by women - That´s literally what they are made for.
So in a sense, we are arguing about degrees of effectiveness rather than the nature of discrimination. Not only is this a slippery slope, but imo it flips everything in business on its head as having a target audience for your product or a service will be considered discriminatory!
> Not only is this a slippery slope, but imo it flips everything in business on its head as having a target audience for your product or a service will be considered discriminatory!
No, it doesn't. If you determine that your target audience watches BET, and you decide to only advertise your product on BET, that's 100% legal.
If you prevented anyone but your target audience from using your service, and you end up discriminating against a protected class, that's a different story.
There are entirely different standards when it comes to hiring and employment.
There is no need for slippery slopes or hypotheticals. All physical advertising platforms have policies against discrimination for job ads and rentals. Newspapers have had stricter requirements for those two areas for years and there are specific laws governing them. Just because it is “on the internet” doesn’t change anything.
Yes you can advertise jobs in Ebony or Cosmopolitan. There is nothing stopping a non Black or man from picking up those magazines.
It is not. Your intent to discriminate is not necessary for you to fall afoul of US equal opportunity laws. Demonstrating disparate impact of your employment policies on a protected class without a valid business is can be sufficient for you to lose your case.
Facebook is way more like a newspaper than a target demo periodical but even when you put the Ad in Cosmo, you pay for the Ad impression no matter who views the Ad. You, as the advertiser have no control over that impression.
If it were common for, say, nursing positions to be advertised in Cosmo, then presumably male nurses looking for work would know this and be able to buy that magazine.
No. If you place an ad on Facebook for housing and choose to exclude people who identify as "black", there's no way for those people to find your ad, save for creating a new Facebook account and pretending to be white.
Anyone is welcome to purchase a copy of Ebony magazine. It's targeted, but it's not exclusive.
But should Ebony be allowed to market ads on Facebook and exclude white people? I honestly don’t know where I come down on this issue: it feels different to say, “we have a better ROI if we exclude certain demographics from seeing our ads” than to say “black people can’t eat at this diner.”
Let’s take a company like REI: is it wrong for them to put their stores in places that are most profitable? Should luxury good companies be required to have store fronts in inner cities?
I’m legitimately not sure I’m comfortable with either answer. “Women / older people are unlikely to respond to this ad; so we’ll have a better ROI by excluding those groups” feels awkward but like a legitimate business interest. If I sell male hygiene products can I exclude women from seeing the ads, not because I don’t like women but because the ad is less likely to be relevant?
“I don’t want to work with women or older people so I’ll not show them the ad” feels unquestionably wrong.
The short answer is: it depends. I don't think you'll run into much trouble in excluding women from your ads for beard care products, but you might of you're excluding them from your ads for housing.
I think you have to consider intent as well as outcome.
> But should Ebony be allowed to market ads on Facebook and exclude white people?
That's not what this thread is about. The question here is what is the difference between advertising on Facebook and excluding some demographics, and advertising in a paper magazine where you don't have the power to exclude anyone from viewing the ad.
Is it really any better to make people choose just really good proxies for their intended audience which theoretically anyone could be a member of but in practice is not that way?
And if this isn’t really any better, where does that leave you?
Where else would you draw the line? I don't think what I described is a real problem in practice. Housing and jobs are often advertised in rather neutral publications, not special interest ones. But what Facebook enables goes beyond targeting based on interest, it's explicitly exclusionary.
If your local newspaper could print a special edition for minority subscribers that didn't include job listings, that would be a problem. Advertising in a special interest publication is not, on its own, a problem. Of course there's no clear lines in reality, everything must be evaluated in context.
not really, because people are aware of the fact that they're going to find say, women targeted ads in cosmo, so they can seek them out. The 'discrimination' in this case is simply aggregate consumer preference, every individual outlier still gets precisely the content and ads they want.
If facebook displays housing ads only to white people a black person is very likely not even aware that they're being discriminated against in some specific way, the entire control is in the hands of facebook and the ad buyer, and intransparent.
The situation would be equivalent if facebook gave you complete control over their algorithm and let you choose what type of ads you want to be exposed to. Which would make discrimination much less of an issue. Or the other way around, the current facebook situation would be akin to the store owner quickly cutting the housing ads out of cosmo as soon as black people walk into the store.
I think that's the main reason why buying an ad in Cosmo is different from buying a targeted Facebook ad in terms of discrimination. Cosmo might be written with women in mind but anybody can go and buy it. But it's pretty much impossible for someone who identifies as a man on Facebook to see ads that are only targeted towards women. The Facebook example is more similar to a real estate agent who only shows certain properties to white families.
I don't think the original comment was asking about employment discrimination specifically. I've seen a lot of people get confused on this topic, and end up thinking it's illegal to discriminate by gender on any advertising at all.
Not really, because it's a question of principle: is it okay to target to a specific demographic, or not; and does that vary based on whether we are discussing a legally-protected class? The significance of what is being advertised doesn't exactly change the definition of right and wrong. If we're being honest, cosmo is probably as accurate a filtering mechanism for white, middle-aged, middle-class women as facebook could be.
The issue seems to be when people _exclude_ certain groups, rather than when people _target_ specific ones; i.e. I can filter for middle-aged white guys for testosterone-boosting pills, but most would balk at filtering _out_ blacks, young people, etc. for rental ads. The question is, is there an ethical difference, and why? I think all of us can agree that a cosmo ad for women is fine, and tossing out a black guy's resume is not; the question is where is that line, and why? These sorts of technologies are bringing us closer to either side, so it's relevant to figure out where it is.
> The significance of what is being advertised doesn't exactly change the definition of right and wrong.
We are discussing legality and yes, what is being advertised has a significant impact. The rules around employment and housing are VERY different from the rules around makeup and viagra.
> The issue seems to be when people _exclude_ certain groups, rather than when people _target_ specific ones;
Nope, both are illegal (for protected classes) when it comes to housing and employment.
The poster you're defending (and, frankly, the whole argument) was trying to make the point that "targeted ads", as a category and devoid of context, was a good thing because you reach the target you want to reach. Fair enough. But if it's an employment ad, and you only want to reach upper class white males, well, that's discrimination. Period. If your "principles" enable that, well there you go.
Let's take the flip side. Pretend I am one of the many companies which have adopted discriminatory hiring practices in favor of certain minorities. I want to hire more of said minorities. I target facebook ads towards them. Is that any better or worse? As far as I'm concerned, they are the same; but many people I know would say that's fine.
> Pretend I am one of the many companies which have adopted discriminatory hiring practices in favor of certain minorities. I want to hire more of said minorities.
Yup, that is illegal. Discriminating based on protected classes is illegal, regardless of which groups within that class you are discriminating for/against.
>> For example, an employer's reliance on word-of-mouth recruitment by its mostly Hispanic work force may violate the law if the result is that almost all new hires are Hispanic. [0]
"I've been given advantage for decades/centuries. We're giving an advantage to the disadvantaged so they have a chance to catch up for years/months. I'm being discriminated against!". Got it.
People today have not been given such advantages. Example: let's say I'm a poor white guy from Appalachia. Will you really tell me I have been given advatages for centuries? When you hire normally, you can somewhat absolve yourself of concern for personal situation; you judge based on emperical information as presented by the candidate. When you play God and take it upon yourself to be the judge, you are morally responsible for discovering everything about some one's life and weighing each impartially against the other. How arrogant must one be to believe himself capable of such a judgement; the judgement not of one resume against another, but of one soul against another? If we could evaluate people's whole selves; we would not have resumes, nor references, nor interviews.
> Example: let's say I'm a poor white guy from Appalachia. Will you really tell me I have been given advatages for centuries?
Yes. That you happen to be poor, in that situation, does not obviate the cultural and sociodynamic power, in this country, from being white. And it's those advantages that just--for example--mean that if you are walking on a dark street in a city at night, a cop is orders of magnitude less likely to stop you and ask "hey, boy, what are you doing out so late?". That you might be poor, of course, is a reason why you are not as culturally or sociodynamically powerful as a middle-class or a rich white man, or maybe even a rich--gasp!--black man. But that white skin is an implicit handicap in your (and, as it happens, my) favor, even if other accidents of birth or providence happen to stack up on the other side. And it is downright immoral not to acknowledge it.
"Play god"--hogwash and worse words. Acknowledge structural imbalances. Poverty is one. Racism in a country that makes racists powerful is another, and it's bigger, and it's multiplicative with the aforementioned poverty in the first place.
And while we're being real about this, it is also worth noting that the historical fear of being "lesser than the black man" is one of the sadder causes of poor whites aligning with rich whites against the poor whites' economic and social interests--that is, the racial fear and resentment helps keep them poor. "Racial unity of poor whites with their economic exploiters" is a pretty good one-line summary of the post-Colonial American South in general, now that I think about it.
