Research Says Facebook's Ad Algorithm Perpetuates Gender Bias
- Reference: 0144856596
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/21/04/09/2246236/research-says-facebooks-ad-algorithm-perpetuates-gender-bias
- Source link:
> In fields from software engineering to sales to food delivery, the team ran sets of ads promoting real job openings at roughly equivalent companies requiring roughly the same skills, one for a company whose existing workforce was disproportionately male and one that was disproportionately female. Facebook showed more men the ads for the disproportionately male companies and more women the ads for the disproportionately female companies, even though the job qualifications were the same. The paper concludes that Facebook could very well be violating federal anti-discrimination laws.
"We confirm that Facebook's ad delivery can result in skew of job ad delivery by gender beyond what can be legally justified by possible differences in qualifications," the team wrote.
The paper can be found [2]here .
[1] https://theintercept.com/2021/04/09/facebook-algorithm-gender-discrimination/
[2] https://ant.isi.edu/datasets/addelivery/
It's 2021 and people still don't understand.. (Score:5, Insightful)
How absolutely disingenuous (to be kind, the alternative is stupid) do you have to be to not understand that if men tend to click and show interest in certain types of companies/products and women tend to click and show interest in certain types of companies/products, or they tend to be friends with people with similar interests that they will tend to be shown those things preferentially.
What next, a breathless fucking article about how in a sample of 100 random men and women the men tended to be shown ads for Arduino and Bitcoin wallets more often than women, who were preferentially shown ads for jewel matching games and MLM marketing? Jesus Christ, get a fucking grip. I promise you there's no "If (IsWoman()) { ShowAvonJobListings() }" type code in Facebook's algortithms.
Also, I hate to break it to these "researchers" but associating existing demographics of the employee base with "proof" of discrimination is also nonsense. Why not go predominant customer base? Or first letter of last name of existing employees? Or.. any other arbitrary measurement.
I 100% guarantee you by these metrics most online Facebook or LinkedIn ads will tend to "discriminate" against black people similarly. You can really get the 'scrimination double play!
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Very disingenuous, but it doesn't stop hordes of people from perpetuating falsehoods to make things look worse than they are.
Feminists are literally using falsehood to prop up and encourage abusive patriarchal practices by corporations. Equality for women isn't even on the map anymore, much less equality for everyone. Just look at what happened to James Damore when he said "Make working at a tech company interesting, or even tolerable, to women and people who have choices, and they may decide to work there
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Don't call those bastards "feminist". Feminism was/is a noble idea that somehow a woman is human and deserves equal rights. It has nothing to do with the cult of 53 genders, racial quotas, "microagressions", banning and firing all unbelievers (or worse, heretics!).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Great Rant. Too bad it is ENTIRELY WRONG. If you had RTFA, you would realize you have no idea what you are talking about.
Specifically the study asked Facebook to show their employment offer to everybody. They did not use any target audience. No "Jewel players", no "Arduino" NOTHING.
It was entirely "Show this ad for delivery drivers to everyone. And also show this Instagram driver ad to everyone."
But some how the Instagram driver ad was shown to mostly women while the "delivery driver' ad was shown to
Not even a peer reviewed journal (Score:1)
Just another manuscript with questionable motives and without any independent checks nor reviews.
It is easy for anyone to "publish' like this.
Or... (Score:1)
It succeeds in squeezing clicks and/or money out of its target market. But hey, a rock could be declared sexist etc today and people would nod their heads and agree.
Alternative explanation (Score:3)
One other possibility would be that Facebook uses interest-based targeting.
If men tend to mention or like Dominos, and women tend to mention or like Instacart, then Facebook will tend to target accordingly. That's not bias, that's knowing their market.
NOT "liberal bull" real facebook discrimination. (Score:1)
This is not about what men/women do, but about what Facebook does.
The study in question made sure it was Facebook's discrimination, not the company because they gave instructions ONLY to 'maximize eyeballs'. That is, they did NOT say "show me people interested in guns", they asked only to get the most people.
So someone in FACEBOOK made discriminatory decisions.
This is not even about algorithms, as they gave zero instructions.
Re: (Score:2)
Let me see if I've got this right:
You think that Facebook employs a person whose job it is to figure out the gender ratios of corporations who might buy employment advertising so that Facebook can steer those ads to the appropriate demographic?
Not just Facebook... (Score:1)
I am a Hispanic male, graduate degree in STEM from large University, work for a huge (top 5 market val) tech firm, manage large software engineering and cloud data teams... have presented at several conferences on artificial intelligence and other tech topics. And for the life of me, LinkedIN has been recommending me jobs for administrative assistant for years, sending me emails and telling me Iâ(TM)m a great fit to be an assistant. My job history never had any trace of this. How does LinkedIN make s
Re: (Score:2)
Same here (hispanic too) and I am shown primarily director level positions. But its in my history. Maybe their algorithms suck more likelly than being racist.
Yanno what (Score:2)
I don't care.
Why ?
Because everything, and I mean EVERYTHING is either biased or racist depending on whom is asked and what agenda they're trying to push.
Algorithms, single family homes, standardized testing, college entrance requirements, hell even MATH is racist apparently.
It's to the point of lunacy.
So, yet another cry of " racism " or " bias " is just one more brick in the wall.
Bias as a symptom? (Score:1)
Facebook probably gathers way more information about you than LinkedIn. So it would make sense for their ads to be more personalized and thus potentially more biased in areas where they shouldn't be. But should we really be most concerned about the bias?
This might be a bit of a hot take, but maybe instead of going after the bias itself, it would be better to attack the root cause and prevent companies from using any personalized information at all in deciding which ads to show. After all, if you show a
* Eyeroll * (Score:5, Insightful)
When will people outright reject this woke bullshit? The pendulum will swing - and swing hard.
Re: (Score:1)
I live iin a major 'liberal' city and i work in a major 'liberal' industry. From the descriptions I've heard from some opinionated people from the right I should be biting my nails at work every day worried that the least lil slip-up will get me 'canceled'. It's the opposite, actually. People treat me well and I show them the same courtesy. Frankly, I have a lot of good times with my coworkers. That stuff that Google's going through with Damore... that feels like a million miles away from where I work.
Re: (Score:1)
Yeah, the "wokeness", as they keep calling it, is the backlash.
Going back would mean women get no vote, restrict abortion (conservatives trying to do that in the US), black people not 100% human, Queer people persecuted, etc, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
C'mon, man.