Facebook is having problems with its ad distribution system . A survey found that the social network commits gender discrimination and fails to display certain job openings for women.
The study by the University of Southern California bought ads on Mark Zuckerberg’s platform with job openings for delivery drivers. The same qualifications were required for vacancies placed by two different companies. There were no specific demographic requirements selected.
One of the ads was to work as a delivery boy for Domino’s Pizza and the other to deliver food for Instacart. The pizzeria network has more male drivers, the result shows that Facebook’s algorithm realized this and directed the vacancies to male people. The company focused on delivering healthy foods had most of its ads targeted to female users.
“The distribution of Facebook ads can result in discrimination in job openings by gender, in addition to which may be legally justified by possible differences in qualifications,” says the research report. “Thus strengthening the arguments raised earlier that Facebook’s ad delivery algorithms may be violating anti-discrimination laws,” he adds.
Facebook and gender discrimination in ads
The result is even clearer as the study also bought ads for the same jobs on LinkedIn. But unlike Facebook, Microsoft’s platform typically showed both job offers for both women and men.
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But it doesn’t stop there, the study also compared other vacancies. Software engineer at Nvidia, was shown more for men, already jewelry seller, women. A car salesman ad was shown more for men, already an opening to work on software development for Netflix, women.
Facebook is not clear whether it maps people who have already worked at that particular company to select who to send jobs to or whether it analyzes the characteristics of the job itself. “Our system takes into account a lot of signals to try to serve people with ads they’ll be most interested in, but we understand the concerns raised in the report,” Facebook spokesman Tom Channick told The Verge .
“We’ve taken significant steps to address gender discrimination issues in Facebook ads and today we have teams working on ad justice. We continue to work closely with the civil rights community, regulators and academics on these important issues.”
This is not the first survey of its kind. In 2016, ProPublica released an analysis that showed a system of “ethnic affinities” on Facebook, failing to show certain job openings for blacks and Hispanics. At the time, the platform said it would work on its code to prevent this type of event from happening again.
Via The Verge
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