Facebook Denies it Lets Advertisers Violate Age Discrimination Law

Facebook is firing back at a written report challenge it enables companies to violate federal employment discrimination law by letting them place recruitment ads on the social network targeted at people younger than xl.

ProPublica on Wednesday reported that "dozens of the nation's leading employers — including Amazon, Goldman Sachs, Target and Facebook itself" have placed recruitment ads on Facebook that are "express to item historic period groups." This practice, according to the NYC-based investigative journalism nonprofit, may violate the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, which protects job applications and employees 40 years-sometime or older from bigotry on the basis of age.

ProPublica quoted one employment lawyer, Debra Katz, who said the exercise is "blatantly unlawful."

In a Thursday blog post, however, Facebook pushed dorsum on the merits that this practice violates the law.

"Simply showing certain job ads to different historic period groups on services like Facebook or Google may not in itself be discriminatory — just as it can be OK to run employment ads in magazines and on Television set shows targeted at younger or older people," Facebook'due south Vice President of Ads Rob Goldman wrote. "What matters is that marketing is broadly based and inclusive, not simply focused on a particular age group."

The controversy comes afterward ProPublica in Oct 2022 revealed that Facebook allow advertisers narrow their audition by "ethnic analogousness," or, in other words, exclude people who are African-American, Asian, or Hispanic. Facebook, in response to that report, promised to curl out tools to detect and automatically disable "ethnic analogousness" marketing.

This time around, Facebook says it disagrees with ProPublica.

"Used responsibly, historic period-based targeting for employment purposes is an accepted industry practice and for good reason: information technology helps employers recruit and people of all ages find work," Goldman wrote.

About Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo is PCMag'southward skillful on fitness and smart home products. Teaching yoga for well-nigh ten years has helped her in evaluating a range of connected wellness products including fitness trackers, middle rate monitors, rowers, smart scales, stationary bikes, force grooming machines, treadmills, and more than. Angela also tests smart dwelling devices from her ranch in Florida, including air purifiers, kitchen appliances, and robot vacuums, just to proper noun a few.