It takes a little time to work out what is happening here:
Facebook has been accused of breaching equality laws after its technology was found to favour men when targeting job adverts for male-dominated roles such as mechanics and pilots.
The campaign group Global Witness has filed complaints with the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) and Information Commissioner, claiming a Facebook algorithm designed to show jobs to the most interested candidates is discriminatory.
In one case, 96pc of those who viewed an advert for a mechanic were men, while 95pc of those who saw a nursery nurse posting were women. Adverts for pilot positions were disproportionately seen by men, while those for psychologists were far more likely to be seen by women.
Facebook has now said that it is preparing to update its job advert system within weeks. Global Witness alleges that the company may have breached laws preventing discrimination against women in the workplace.
In the Global Witness tests, the advertiser had not specified that job adverts should be directed at a particular gender. The targeting was instead the results of a Facebook algorithm that aims to push adverts into the feeds of users likely to be most receptive.
So, Global Witness mocks up some ads which look for psychologists, pilots and so on. Mechanics and pilots are largely male dominated fields of work, psychology female. OK.
So the ad placing mechanism shows more of the mechanic and pilot ads to men, more of the psychology to women. That’s what you want the ad placing mechanism to do, that’s the whole point of the idea in the first place. Advertise to the people likely to be interested thereby lowering the cost of the advertising. You don’t advertise tampons on porn sites and you do advertise fast food delivery around dinner time. That’s just the way it all works.
At which point Global Witness (BTW, a charity supposedly dedicated to ending third world poverty, presumably they’re changing tack now that third world poverty is being dealt with by the capitalism they despise) gets outraged.
Their demand is that advertising must be directed at people who have no interest in the thing being advertised. Ho Hum.
’ At which point Global Witness (BTW, a charity…’
Real, or fake charity?
So now I’m going to be further pestered by adverts that aren’t even aimed at me.
“Well Mr BiND, we know you’re retired, were a telecoms engineer and have no nursing qualifications, but have a look at this job advert for a senior nurse anyway.”
Well I agree with you BiND. I get too much junk as it is.
Someone is having so much trouble recruiting pilots that they need to advertise on Farceberk?
The Great Resignation truly is in full swing.
If anyone has any sense and has cause to use Facebook, installing FB Purity will put a stop to all the adverts, so not a problem.
Global Witness submitted two job ads for approval, asking Facebook not to show:
one to women
the other to anyone over the age of 55
And the social-media giant approved both ads for publication, although it did ask the organisation to tick a box saying it would not discriminate against these groups.
Global Witness pulled the adverts before they were published.
This is the greatest scandal since I left the toilet seat up.
The group specified only the ads should be seen by UK adults.
“That meant that it was entirely up to Facebook’s algorithm to decide who to show the ads to,” Ms Hirst said, “and what it decided appears to us to be downright sexist.”
When are the Taliban coming to liberate us?
“The difference here,” Ms Hirst said, “is that if you are a woman looking for a job as a mechanic, you could just as easily go to a shop and buy that magazine as your male peer.
“It’s just simply not true online.”
In Clown World, everything’s the opposite of how it should be. Men are nagged about not doing women’s work. Women are nagged about not doing men’s work. Lawyers are rarely killed and eaten by lions.
Equality is a mean and evil little god, and worshipping it leads only to ugliness and misery. What if we had a society based around the principle of excellence instead?
I look forward to all the women seeing ads for working in the sewers, hod carrying, doing the bins etc
As BiG says, though, the pilot ads are a bit of a puzzle. If you are an out of work pilot you are unlikely to be prompted into deciding to apply for a job by seeing it on Facebook. And if you are training to be a pilot you have not been paying attention to the way the world is going.
There was something similar on R4 months ago. Research was showing that there was a bias towards men when targeting job adverts, and there was naturally much angst.
One of the reasons given was the extra cost of targeting women. The likely reason, so it was said, was that women controlled around 90%* of household budgets, and were therefore regarded as more valuable by advertisers. The penny did not drop.
* I’ve heard lower 80s in the past, but 90 was stated.
I wonder if GW does any targeting at all in its fundraising? Or does it use the exact same verbiage and/or photos in every bit of begging? That might be interesting, what if they send different leaflets to posh addresses (which are whiter)?
You don’t advertise tampons on porn sites and you do advertise fast food delivery around dinner time. That’s just the way it all works.
If that’s the way it all works, why do nearly all the adverts feature black people when nearly all the population is white people?
‘If that’s the way it all works, why do nearly all the adverts feature black people when nearly all the population is white people?’
The upper class has more prestige PJF.
@BiND: “were a telecoms engineer” – tell your offspring to describe you simply as “engineer” when they apply for jobs at accounting firms.
I think I’ll tell mine to describe me as “tool maker” – I have made a few in my time. And it works for Sir Kneel Starmer.
“You don’t advertise tampons on porn sites ”
Rule 34 surely has to apply to this. I’m not doing the research to prove it though. Where’s BiS?
“If that’s the way it all works, why do nearly all the adverts feature black people when nearly all the population is white people?”
That’s something that really bugs me. There’s a bumper currently running on Channel 4 where a black lady is narrating over the visuals saying “where are all the black people on TV?”
Where are they? They’re on TV. Oh, you mean why aren’t there more black people on TV? Because there aren’t more black people in the population, idiot.
Black people are about 5% of the population, the proportion seen on TV is actually *MORE* than representative, and she is complaining that there isn’t more.
I’m a medical diagnostic equipment IT field engineer, why do I and my 4000 colleagues not see more of us on TV????
“So the ad placing mechanism shows more of the mechanic and pilot ads to men”
If the mechanism is really good it’s showing mechanic jobs to mechanics and pilot jobs to pilots. It doesn’t need to make any decisions on something as irrelevant as the sex of those mechanics and pilots. The sexual bias just occurs as the natural result of targeting an industry with more men than women.
As someone who works in advertising (the data analysis end of it), I can say Worstall is 100% correct on this.
Now, don’t get me started on advertiser blacklists and “brand safety.”
There has been quite a lot of research on the “equity” of certain algorithms, from loan approval to likelihood of skipping bail to advertising. One thing you can do is impose to address fairness at a *group* level is impose a “fairness constraint” – in this case, that the ad gets shown to equal numbers of men and women.
But this focus on inter-group fairness has two big disadvantages. Firstly it means the algorithm is less well targeted, which reduces social welfare. Aside from the societal annoyance of being shown irrelevant ads, the advertiser gets less bang for their buck. Societal harm is even clearer if we are making our algorithm worse at predicting “which of these perps is more likely to reoffend?” Secondly, it means the algorithm is less fair on an *individual* level: two people, whose characteristics recorded on the system are otherwise identical, get a different result depending on their race/gender/whatever. It’s not unreasonable to think “shouldn’t the system be blind to that?” but that’s generally not where the current ethical thinking is among those who decide these things. Being “unfairly” targeted for advertising based on a characteristic you feel should be intrinsically irrelevant is maybe not all that troublesome, but if a similar algorithm has a role in mortgage or parole approval then it’s worth taking these matters more seriously.
Interesting reads on this:
https://jacobitemag.com/2017/08/29/a-i-bias-doesnt-mean-what-journalists-want-you-to-think-it-means/
https://www.chrisstucchio.com/pubs/slides/loans_for_ladies.pdf
Particularly loved the comparison of San Fran to India in terms of what was considered “acceptable” or even desirable… Whole different ball game of discrimination there where concepts of “race” or “ethnicity” are less clearly defined.
@steve: “What if we had a society based around the principle of excellence instead?”
These days I would be happy with the principle of competence.
installing FB Purity will put a stop to all the adverts
Adblocker works wonders for me.
“If that’s the way it all works, why do nearly all the adverts feature black people when nearly all the population is white people?”
Hehehe! I want to hear what Jonathan has to say about this
Yes, muffin – and if that woman should start clicking on articles / adverts about shop tools, drill presses, or welding torches she’ll start seeing job ads for mechanics or welders. Just like clicking on articles about business and finance will bring them ads for accounting or CFA programs and so on (according to a friend). Facebook cares about your eyeballs and your likelihood to click through on an advertisment; it couldn’t give a rat’s hind end for your genital arrangement.
There’s a legitimate problem, but the complaint is simplistic.
For example, we have no reason to suppose that women are any worse mechanics than men, so if we find the proportions in work to be far off 50:50, it’s evidence that girls who would be good mechanics are doing other things instead. One of the ways that can happen is when they are looking for jobs – if they get shown far fewer job ads for “male” jobs, maybe they’ll find a different job first. If the ads are triggered (as dcardno suggests) by people reading articles about welding, that’s fine as the sam bias applies to boys when they start looking for a job. The women who are suitable as mechanics are likely to be included. The problem happens when someone just chooses to show the ad only to men, even though there is a better targeted group.
The effect will be most noticeable on people who are good at multiple things. The girl who really wants to be a mechanic may well succeed in the face of teachers’ disapproval, etc. But the girl who would be very good at that and at something seen as more suitable for women (e.g. nurse), would be very likely to be diverted by the bias.
“it’s evidence that girls who would be good mechanics are doing other things instead”
Why, exactly, is “other things” a particular problem?