FACEBOOK has been accused of enabling sexist job advertising and breaking equality law.
Global Witness, a campaign group, claims that Facebook has a biased algorithm that decides who sees a job advertisement and is failing to combat discrimination.
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The group conducted an experiment in which it sent two job adverts to Facebook for approval and asked that one wasn’t shown to women and that another wasn’t shown to anyone older than 55.
Both of the ad were approved by Facebook for publication.
Global Witness did, however, ask Facebook to check a box indicating that it wouldn’t discriminate against applicants it didn’t want to advertise.
The ads were not actually published by the campaigners.
Their investigation revealed that 96% of people who saw an ad on Facebook for mechanic jobs were men and 95% for those who saw one for nurse jobs in the nursery were women.
It claimed that 75% of people shown an advertisement for pilot jobs on Facebook were men, while 77% of those showing an ad to psychologist jobs were women.
Naomi Hirst, Head of the Digital Threats Campaign at Global Witness, said:
“It’s really shocking that Facebook’s own algorithm appears to target job ads in such a discriminatory way.
“Targeting adverts for nursery workers at women and mechanic jobs at
men – what century does Facebook think we’re living in?!”
She added: “The strapline for Facebook’s workplace culture is ‘Move Fast. Be Bold. Be Yourself.’
“But clearly that only applies if ‘being yourself’ means being a man aged between 25 and 34, as that’s the person most likely to have been shown job ads from the social media company.
“This seems very unfair to over 40% of Facebook users who are women and the majority who fall outside that age bracket.”
“We are reviewing the findings within this report.” – Facebook spokesperson
Although the experiment was conducted in the UK, the issue is not said to be exclusive to one country.
Global Witness says that Algorithm Watch and academics have shown that
Facebook’s ad delivery algorithm is “highly discriminatory in delivering job ads in France, Germany, Switzerland and the US.”
Barrister Schona Jolly QC examined the campaign group’s evidence and authored Global Witness’s submission to the UK Equality and Human Rights Commission about the issue.
She said: “Facebook’s system itself may, and does appear to, lead to discriminatory outcomes.”
A Facebook spokesperson told us: “Our system takes into account different kinds of information to try and serve people ads they will be most interested in, and we are reviewing the findings within this report.
“We’ve been exploring expanding limitations on targeting options for job, housing and credit ads to other regions beyond the US and Canada, and plan to have an update in the coming weeks.”
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