Men only? Facebook, ‘dark ads’ and discrimination
Men only ? Facebook, ‘dark ads’ and discrimination
If a marketer chooses to show an ad to a select group, is it targeting or discrimination?
This question is central to a lawsuit filed last month against Facebook.
The plaintiffs are alleging that the social network illegally allows employers to show job ads only to men0.
Violating the Civil Rights Act in the US.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Communications Workers Union and law firm Outten & Golden.
Have teamed up to pursue the company. for allegedly profiting from discrimination.
Linda Bradley from Ohio, Bobbi Spees from Pennsylvania and Renia Hudson from Chicago claim they were looking for work on Facebook.
But were excluded from seeing some ads because at least 10 businesses were using the site’s targeting capabilities to show them exclusively to men.
Read Also: Facebook should scale up its efforts to prevent discriminatory ads
It has long been common practice to target specific groups by buying ads next to TV shows popular with that demographic.
Now, marketers are using data to target narrow groups on Facebook, where they can select from thousands of factors based on consumers’ interests and behaviour.
These are sometimes dubbed “dark ads” because other populations do not know they exist.
This is not the first time that Facebook has been criticised for allowing discriminatory ads.
In 2016 and again in 2017, news organisation ProPublica reported that the social network was allowing landlords to exclude certain racial groups from seeing ads. This year.
Facebook responded by taking down 5,000 targeting categories
— although it did not specify what criteria it used when deciding which ones to remove.
It has banned advertising based on “multicultural affinity”
— the categories that some advertisers use as a proxy for race — if the advert is offering housing, employment or credit.
But it has not banned job adverts targeted to only one gender.