Facebook said to target job ads to men

Complaint alleges social media giant is discriminating

Three female job hunters, a large worker coalition and the American Civil Liberties Union lodged a legal complaint against Facebook on Tuesday, accusing the company of enabling discriminatory job postings with its ad targeting tools.

The complaint also targets 10 employers that used Facebook to post job ads — for roles as police officers, truck drivers and sales representatives at a sports store — that were exclusively targeted at men, according to images of ads in the complaint.

The complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is the latest of several legal efforts that take aim at Facebook’s core business of targeting advertising to highly tailored groups of consumers, a model that earned the company over $13 billion in revenue last quarter.

The groups bringing the charges, including the 700,000-member Communications Workers of America union, argue that long-standing civil rights laws that protect people from discrimination are being routinely broken as more job and housing searches move online.

“There is no place for discrimination on Facebook; it’s strictly prohibited in our policies, and over the past year, we’ve strengthened our systems to further protect against misuse,” said Joe Osborne, a Facebook spokesman. “We are reviewing the complaint and look forward to defending our practices.”

Federal laws prohibit employers, lenders, insurers and landlords from excluding people from advertising on the basis of what are known as “protected categories,” which include gender, race, national origin, religion, age, military status, disability and sexual orientation.