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.
> 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?
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.
Remember, we make laws and they are there to make society work/better. So whilst the legal answer is "yes", I presume the real question was "_Is_ this gender discrimination?", as in; let's actually think about it instead of fobbing it off to the current state of the law.
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.
> Whether intentional or not, you cannot advertise a job to only certain people based on targeting by a protected characteristic.
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.
>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?
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.
A company the size of Facebook has far more than enough resources to know that different ads have different requirements, if only legal ones, because moral ones seem hopelessly quaint. I, a know-nothing engineer not working in HR or advertisement, would have raised a question to Product asking whether job ads had to be excepted from the regular optimisations and advertised equally to everyone. Why didn't Facebook think about it? The answer is they did, they just chose to ignore it because money is more important, or at least the perception of choosing money over morals or legality.
Taken to its logical conclusion you essentially have to make targeted ads illegal. Now it's gender, next it's race, then it's socioeconomic standing. Then it's age. Etc etc.
I think making targeted ads illegal is a great idea all by itself. It would kneecap the entire surveillance and data industry built around tracking people for f**g ads. The gov will still track you though, but that's a different nut to crack.
I wonder if this should also apply to more traditional areas. Say TV and magazines. So advertisers should not be able to choose which demographics they target via proxy. That is you should not be able to choose say magazine or tv slot based on demographics.
As it stands now, I am so appalled by how much and how deep the ad-funded tracking an surveillance system is that I'd want all of it, every bit, for all media everywhere, torn down. But realistically, there probably does exist a reasonable balance between demographic data collection and use, and personal privacy that would work. We are just so far from that currently that I find it hard to imagine what it would look like.
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.