Greg's Corner

Facebook accused of discriminating against women in job ads

Facebook doesn’t seem to be able to stop making headlines for all the wrong reasons. If it’s not for massive data breaches or election meddling, it’s for doing little to nothing to prevent hate crimes and ethnic cleansing. Now Facebook is back in the news once again for allegedly allowing employers to target only men in ads for employment. This practice has been outlawed in the United States since the early 1960s.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) alleging that Facebook allowed the option of gender exclusion in their ad platform. For example, when an employer places an ad with Facebook there is an option that allows you to target only male Facebook users. Several employers are also accused in the complaint of actively using this feature.

With all its faults, I don’t think Facebook purposely looked to violate civil rights laws by actively trying to exclude women from ads for jobs in male-dominated fields. However, this is a gross oversight that Facebook should have been well aware of before this became a legal matter. This is yet another example of how Facebook has lost control of its own power and scope. When the ad platform was designed, someone should have had enough sense to realize that while targeting merchandise ads to specific genders is fine while allowing employers to use the same gender-specific targeting was just asking for more bad PR nightmares than Facebook already has.