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.
Not op, but if I was paying for ads on a platform, I want to make the best use of my money, and target users that may more likely react positively. If this means that ads looking for mechanics are more likely to be seen by men, so be it, why should I show them to somebody not interested ?
Unless somebody says explicitly "no women", there is no discrimination in my opinion.
>why should I show them to somebody not interested ?
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.
Reminds me of an old argument that if I'm running a restaurant, and if customers don't want to be served by coloured people or homosexuals, I shouldn't have to hire them. It's bad for business, what other reason do I need?
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.
That’s a pretty simple rule but allows lots of deliberate ways to significantly reduce one group.
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.
You would need to connect men not being as prevalent in child care profession roles to some sort of systemic harm. Or women not being as prevalent in construction worker roles. Just because there's a discrepancy between the two genders doesn't mean there's systemic harm stemming from it.
the harm in child care and education should be obvious: children need role models of both genders. in no other profession is it as important for gender parity to be enforced. so at least in that area there is most certainly a systemic harm if one gender dominates.
every adult the children come in contact with is a role model. children don't select their role models. the amount of time that children spend in kindergarten and school makes that inevitable. for good and for bad. you can't not count on children getting their role models from there, but you can't even avoid it. children need role models from both genders. and if there is no gender parity (or something reasonably close) in education, then they are not getting the role models they need.
I've thought a bit about this since you made the comment, and I think your point about education in particular has a lot of merit. I would normally dispute how you phrased your last sentence, but I've noticed this decline in how boys perform in school, and also noticed that the teaching profession is highly gendered. Thanks for the discussion, you've given me a bunch to think about.
You can always claim harm, but proving it is a different story.
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.
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.
How does what is advertised to you affect your opportunities? Opportunities are things that are available to you. Obviously people can seek out opportunities. They don't have to have them thrust in front of them.
If a company gets 0% response from a certain group, why should they have to pay for ads, when the likelihood they will find a candidate is next to nothing?
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.
Maybe Tech companies like Duo are just running gendered job ads, and that's why men aren't applying - they never see the ads. By your logic, that would be totally acceptable, right?
Are you saying the harm from gender-based employment discrimination needs to be demonstrated, or that harm from facebook's permitting of that discrimination needs to be demonstrated?
The job was posted was in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard.'
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.
I'd bet a chunk of cash that it's segmenting people, at least initially. And the "gender A" segment are seeing the ads that are popular with the "gender B" segment at a far lower rate, or not at all.
So it's not an individual's revealed preferences, it's a group's revealed preferences. And that's where the discrimination comes in.
So if I advertise my golfing equipment only in golf clubs, and golf clubs happen to be predominantly visited by old white men, am I discriminating against the young, against women, and against people of color?
There's a big difference between first-order and second-order effects. If you explicitly check the box that says "show this job only to old white men" then we can prove your intent was to discriminate. If you advertise at a golf club, we have no such proof.
Also, unless the golf club is discriminating, female golfers are just as able to see the ad -vs- male golfers.
Meta does not provide such a checkbox for explicit gender selection in Europe for job adds - it’s forbidden by law. But you can select interest, such as golfing. If more men happen to be interested in golf, more men will see your add.
Not the guy you're responding to but I'm not going to willingly pay money for pork rind ads to be shown to Muslims. In fact I'd go so far as to suggest that should be illegal as a hate crime.
Under that legal regime I could imagine Meta being simultaneously sued by one group of people for not discriminating enough on one demographic category, and by another group of people for discriminating too much along a different category. And this ultimately why I would like to see these kinds of laws repealed completely.
Yes I cringe whenever I see the logo. I use it too and it works well enough but it’s so inelegant.
I wish visual designers involved themselves more in open source development.
Use an icon pack, and it is very likely it has something different already there for Calibre. I use candy icons, and I like the Calibre "logo" in this icon pack.
The UI is a mess of buttons and menus strewn about everywhere. I'm not complaining, Calibre is a great project, but let's not kid ourselves that the UI is even mediocre.
This is such an aggressive way of saying something unhelpful. Visual/information/interaction. design -can- be an important part of an app team. I also think calibre is clunky and many of their interactions inelegant. That it’s also ugly is not irrelevant - reading is or can be an aesthetic experience too. I’m grateful it exists but like Anki I really wish someone with real design skills could help them polish the rough edges - that would make it a pleasure to use rather than just ok.
Some designers are definitely terrible (e.g. whoever made the mind numbing decision to use hamburger menus in Gnome), but plenty are good at their jobs. Go and watch some Tantacruul videos on YouTube.
I share your feelings. I’ve had covid 3 times, and have increasingly noticed changes in how my mind works, as alarming as that sounds. Slow, forgetful and sensitive to stress and tiredness, I fear sometimes that my ability to do my work will completely unravel.
Breathing exercises help, but mainly in calming me down if I start becoming distressed when dwelling on it too much. I still work full time and feel like overal my long covid symptoms are subsiding but I can’t shake this nagging feeling that I’m less intelligent than 2 years ago.
