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Excel_Wizard | 6 years ago
>One reason for the persistent bias is that Facebook’s modified algorithm appears to rely on proxy characteristics that correlate with age or gender, said Alan Mislove, a Northeastern University professor of computer science and one of the study’s co-authors.
Hypothetically, let's say that the trucking company in the article used "people interested in cars" as a targeted group. It would come as no surprise to me if this group was > 80% male.
It may even be by another mechanism- facebook's algorithm may look at the profiles of individuals that clicked through on ads in order to determine who to show the ads to in the future. This is a good way to provide cost effective advertisement. This also may be done in a way such that a small fraction of these ads are still shown to $membersOfProtectedClassX, even in cases where said class is statistically unlikely to click on the ad. What small fraction is necessary to be legally unproblematic?
If Joe Schmoe creates a facebook ad to hire for a bricklaying job (a job which is 98% male), what percentage of those ads must be served to women to be legally compliant?
ajross|6 years ago
That's a straw man. The situation of concern is failing to advertise high value or high status products and opportunities to people who would be disadvantaged. So to stay with your analogy, if you have a job to hire a React developer (a job which is right around 90% male), but you don't show it to someone because their browsing history includes Pinterest but not Reddit, then you're discriminating. And that's a problem worth worrying about and trying to address. Likewise ads for vacation timeshares that go to Taylor Swift fans but not to Diddy afficionados.
Yes, it's possible that there may be some collateral damage in the bricklaying recruiting industry. And, sure, maybe that's something that needs some regulatory relief. But mostly I think you're just looking for an example here.
throwaway1777|6 years ago