FACEBOOK DELIVERS BIASED JOB ADS, SKEWED BY GENDER

Facebook is showing different job ads to women and men in a way that might run afoul of antidiscrimination laws, according to a new study.

University of Southern California researchers who examined the ad-delivery algorithms of Facebook and LinkedIn found that Facebook’s were skewed by gender beyond what can be legally justified by differences in job qualifications.

Men were more likely to see Domino’s pizza delivery driver job ads on Facebook, while women were more likely to see Instacart shopper ads.

The trend also held in higher-paying engineering jobs at tech firms like Netflix and chipmaker Nvidia. A higher fraction of women saw the Netflix ads than the Nvidia ads, which parallels the gender breakdown in each company’s workforce.

No evidence was found of similar bias in the job ads delivered by LinkedIn.

Study author Aleksandra Korolova, an assistant professor of computer science at USC, said it might be that LinkedIn is doing a better job at deliberately tamping down bias, or it might be that Facebook is simply better at picking up real-world cues from its users about gender imbalances and perpetuating them.

“It’s not that the user is saying, ‘Oh, I’m interested in this.’ Facebook has decided on behalf of the user whether they are likely to engage,” she said. “And just because historically a certain group wasn’t interested in engaging in something, doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have an opportunity to pursue it, especially in the job category.”

Facebook said in a statement it has been taking meaningful steps to address issues of discrimination in ads.

“Our system takes into account many signals to try and serve people ads they will be most interested in, but we understand the concerns raised in the report,” it said.

Facebook promised to overhaul its ad targeting system in 2019 as part of a legal settlement.

The social network said then it would no longer allow housing, employment or credit ads that target people by age, gender or zip code. It also limited other targeting options so these ads don’t exclude people on the basis of race, ethnicity and other legally protected categories in the U.S., including national origin and sexual orientation.

Endlessly customizable ad targeting is Facebook’s bread and butter, so any limits placed on its process could hurt the company’s revenue.