Lawsuit Claims Facebook Job Ads Illegally Discriminate

In years past, Facebook has gotten in trouble with the government for allowing marketers to discriminate in housing ads. Now, a similar allegation comes from a group of female truckers who say the social media giant “routinely discriminates” with its targeted advertising based on gender and age.

According to a filing from the nonprofit Real Women in Trucking, Facebook’s own data shows an overwhelming bias toward male job candidates, especially when it comes to blue collar jobs stereotypically associated with men.

“Facebook’s algorithm regularly acts like recruiters in the 1960s (and even later), who identified jobs as ‘Male’ or ‘Female’ based on gender stereotypes or indicated their preferences to hire younger workers,” the group said. “While Facebook has been warned for years by civil rights advocates and regulators that algorithmic bias is likely to be a serious problem on its platform and would violate a range of civil rights laws, Facebook has failed to stop the algorithmic discrimination that occurs in most cases when Facebook publishes job ads throughout the nation.”

For its part, Facebook seemed to acknowledge the problem, saying that this kind of discrimination is an “industrywide challenge.” However, other social media companies don’t have the reach or power of Facebook, making its failures in this area even more impactful.




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