Facebook caught up in court battle with Amazon and pals over 'ageist job ads' that targeted young A lawsuit alleging that Amazon.com, Cox Media Group, Cox Communications and T-Mobile US used Facebook ads to discriminate against older jobseekers has been expanded to finger other organizations, including Facebook. The complaint was filed in December on behalf of the Communications Workers of America union, in the wake of a …
"Age-limited ads, he said, are not discriminatory if they're part of a broader marketing campaign.
"Used responsibly, age-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason: it helps employers recruit and people of all ages find work," he said."
Is there any context to go with either of those statements or does Facebook think they can make
self-contradicting statements and nobody will think about them.
It's about time FB got a corporate kick in the goolies.
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Advertising for shampoo or makeup in a teen mag isn't a potential minefield for age discrimination, as there can be no rational claim to shampoo - or makeup - discrimination.
Job adverts in a magazine that is explicitly age-targeted, on the other hand ... not good.
Amazon, Facebook, etc. can easily publish their job adverts on web sites that aren't explicitly age-targeted.
Every magazine has a very good idea of the age profile of its readers, and rest assured that information is presented to potential advertisers as part of the sales pitch.
Perhaps a reasonable solution would be to allow Facebook users to search for job ads meeting whatever conditions they specify, and then don't filter those results by criteria that the user doesn't specify. That way, any Facebook user would be able to view any job ad.
> That way, any Facebook user would be able to view any job ad.
They can easily advertise jobs on LinkedIn. Or Facebook, but without age target restrictions. Or Indeed.com. Or Glassdoor.com.
Or they can create an email subscription to their job openings feed where everyone and anyone can subscribe regardless of age.
My assumption being that, in this day and age, most techies get their job openings info online, and don't read the jobs section in printed copies of newspapers. :-)
If they sent out some ads targeting 22-35 and talking about how they have flex work and locations near hip downtown locations, and another ads targeting 36-50 talking about how they have on-site child care and 12 weeks paternity leave, and ads targeting 51+ talking about how they have great health care plans and allow people to transition to part time work as they approach retirement...
Yeah, I'm sure that's not why they were doing it either, but it would be nice if they could find one company that actually took the high road instead of looking for a way to advertise only at those who will ask for less money!
"Shouldn't it depend on why they specified age limits?
If they sent out some ads targeting 22-35 and talking about how they have flex work and locations near hip downtown locations, and another ads targeting 36-50 talking about how they have on-site child care and 12 weeks paternity leave, and ads targeting 51+ talking about how they have great health care plans and allow people to transition to part time work as they approach retirement..."
Absolutely - if you have covered the whole working age range with ads then that's fine. Pretty clear that this is unlikely to be what has been done though.
One of the reasons I suspect many youngish PHBs do not like older workers is they have been there and do that before. They seen the periodic hype about AI, fusion, etc. and the resultant crash and burn enough times to have some pretty thick scars and callouses. Thus, they are naturally more wary of the latest fad and marketing 'trend' and will tend to ask hard, sometimes embarrassing questions. The PFYs, however, do not have that experience. Thus can be more easily snowed by marketing patter.
Yeah, I wonder how well an interview would go if I queried a stray question, remarking how someone I knew nearly got fired for revising interview tests halfway through because he didn't like a particular demo, more than 30 years ago! Would it count against me if the interviewer were less than 30 years old?
1. Mandate some metadata marking of job ads as such. Also mandate further job ad metadata to specify location, industry, category, title, etc.
2. Forbid restricting job ads by age/race/religion/whatever (this is probably in line with the existing laws in most enlightened countries, but IANAL).
3. Devise a way to tell ad blockers to filter out everything but job ads, based on the ad metadata. Utilize the metadata from item 1 above to further narrow things down. Filter out everything that does not follow the standards of item 1 above.
4. Sue the pants off anyone who does not follow the rules. Channel the fines collected to development of ad blockers (one can hope, can't one?).
Potential employers/advertizers have an incentive to follow the rules because they should be interested in having a wide audience (beyond complying to laws). The filtering will be done by people looking for employment. Ad flingers and ad brokers will avoid legal troubles as long as they enforce the simple rules of item 1...
> Potential employers/advertizers have an incentive to follow the rules because they should be interested in having a wide audience
That simply isn't true. If I run an minimum-wage sweatshop, and facebook are going to charge me £0.01 per person they show a recruitment advert too, then I'll get a much better bang for my buck if that advert is only shown to young, unemployed, relatively desperate people. If they start showing it to stable, middle income, 50+ year old parents, they'll be wasting my money.
Wide audience works well when the advert is a fixed cost per run (eg a billboard, or a newspaper advert). When it is a pay-per-view, then I want the narrowest audience possible.
Legislation exists to prevent this turning into discrimination. Facebook doesn't appear to be paying any heed to the legislation.
Not actually. What I really wish that I'd done was gone to school for something like heavy equipment repair. Those folks are always in demand. Now I'm an unemployed IT worker only a few years from retirement who probably won't be able to land anything but a helpdesk job or something in retail because I'm over 50
With things as they are I'll never see a job add on Facebook. I entered my birth year as 1925 (with incorrect month and day as well). Of course now it is locked and I cannot change it, but I can live with that. It's not like I am going to provide then with any real personal info to confirm what they know about me.
....and yes, I'm kidding myself believing for even a moment that they don't know my real birth date.
Targeting teen mags for job ads is just as bad but because it's Facebook it gets more coverage.
Both should be banned. It's ageism plain and simple. I also don't like the young and hip angle. Sounds like code for young and good looking and we already know looks is still the biggest discrimination people face and with face recognition how long before that gets taken to extreme levels.
I'd have thought that was illegal even (or especially) in the USA.
Watching TV as a youngster in 60's and 70's I always thought the USA was quite advanced in race relations and equal opportunities. I'm older and more worldly wise (AKA cynical) nowadays of course but back then the lack of non-white faces in UK positions of power was stark in comparison to the US. It feels like the US stopped their advancement about 1975 and are now lagging or in reverse. (and yes, I'm well aware of the racist problems in the UK too)
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