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Facebook, Amazon, and Hundreds of Companies Post Targeted Job Ads That Screen Out Older Workers (vox.com) 169

Older workers are accusing Facebook, Ikea, and hundreds of other companies for discriminating against job seekers in their 50s and 60s through targeted job ads posted on Facebook. From a report: The Communications Workers of America, a labor union representing 700,000 media workers across the country, added the companies to a class-action lawsuit on Tuesday, which was filed in California federal court in December. In its original complaint, the labor union accused Amazon, T-Mobile, and Cox Media Group of doing the same thing. The case, Bradley v. T-Mobile, has major implications for US employers, who routinely buy job ads on Facebook to reach users. The plaintiffs argue that Amazon, T-Mobile, Ikea, Facebook, and hundreds of other companies target the ads so they are only seen by younger Facebook users.

The lawsuit revolves around Facebook's unique business model, which lets advertisers micro-target the network's users based on their interests, city, age, and other demographic information. In the past, equal rights advocates have sued Facebook for accepting ads that discriminate against consumers based on their religion, race, and gender. Facebook has argued that the company is not legally responsible when other companies buy ads that violate the law.

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Facebook, Amazon, and Hundreds of Companies Post Targeted Job Ads That Screen Out Older Workers

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  • First question.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fluffernutter ( 1411889 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @09:42AM (#56709922)
    The first question that comes to my mind is, why would ANYONE be honest when entering their information into Facebook?
    • places are not honest about how many hours per week they want you to work.

      Japan is really bad but they still have the room where older people are paid to sit on ass all till retirement age

    • Re:First question.. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 01, 2018 @09:54AM (#56709974)

      I signed up on Facebook to stay connected with my relatives and reconnect with old friends I hadn't seen in a while. A few of the old friends I looked up, I couldn't find--so I figured we'd connect later when they created accounts. I assumed their finding me would be eased by my posting my correct info.

      I read a lot of stuff on Slashdot about how bad it is that Facebook knows everything about us, but y'all haven't successfully articulated just what I should fear.
      What are the potential negative consequences if Facebook knows my real name and where and when I went to high school?

      The story we're commenting on is about the terrible possibility that I might not see certain ads on Facebook. That's a risk I'm willing to take.

      • Re:First question.. (Score:4, Informative)

        by H3lldr0p ( 40304 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @10:35AM (#56710220) Homepage

        What are the potential negative consequences if Facebook knows my real name and where and when I went to high school?

        Anymore? Not a whole lot at the individual level. There was a time when anyone could look at your profile and stalk you that way, but there has since been controls put in place to keep that from happening without a better understanding of the underlying mechanisms (aka, hacking) facebook uses to generate the pages it sends you.

        On the whole no one cares about you and your daily grind. The fear of wholesale turning over of logs to law enforcement for no reason seem to be unfounded as well as the delusion that you are interesting enough for, say, intelligence services to want to know more about you. I think it says more about the people who continue to fight against the service than those who use it to reconnect with friends and family members they wouldn't otherwise know anything about.

        However, that isn't to say that there's no danger. These lie more in being the target of individualized advertising and propaganda. These are more dangers of aggregation, how you can be grouped together with other people, which is what TFA is talking about.

        • by aitikin ( 909209 )

          What are the potential negative consequences if Facebook knows my real name and where and when I went to high school?

          Anymore? Not a whole lot at the individual level. There was a time when anyone could look at your profile and stalk you that way...

          Oh gods! I just remembered how thefacebook used to tell everyone what dorm you logged in from...Yeah, it was SUPER creepy back then...

        • by lucasnate1 ( 4682951 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @11:00AM (#56710396) Homepage

          I live in a country (Israel) where people were fired because their workplaces monitored their facebook walls and found out they spoke against the army. I was also told, when I wanted to apply for a job, that I will have to make sure my facebook account is clean, and that lying that I don't have facebook would seem suspicious. I have heard that in the US, there are workplaces that wlll not hire you if you don't have an active facebook.

          Does this answer your question? (And yes, I do agree that there are ways around this).

          • by SantiagoMcRib ( 3238871 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @12:22PM (#56710958)

            I have heard that in the US, there are workplaces that wlll not hire you if you don't have an active facebook.

            No employer in America would decide against hiring you because you don't have an active facebook account.

            However, you might not be the "right fit" for the company.

        • by arth1 ( 260657 )

          On the whole no one cares about you and your daily grind.

          Except, of course, those that do.
          - People you might have attracted or pissed off in the past and who either work for Facebook (or affiliated companies, it seems), or can get access through someone who does.
          - Collection agencies and bounty hunters in their extended searches for someone else, or because you happen to have a similar name or address.
          - Three letter agencies needing to justify their existence.
          - Bored employees.

      • Name is fine, but age? Marital status? Why does any of that need to be public?
        • Re:First question.. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by H3lldr0p ( 40304 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @11:21AM (#56710524) Homepage

          I hate to break it to you but if you got married anywhere in the US, that's considered a public record and can be looked up. Not finding a record isn't conclusive proof but it's a good indicator that you're not.

          In conclusion, your marital status is already public. It cannot be used against you as part of a job application, however. Those are two different things.

          • Birth is also a public record, so anyone that knows what city/state you were born in can find out your birth date.
          • Maybe Facebook has requested every marriage license where I am from and populated their database, not ruling that out. Yet maybe they haven't, and I don't need to make it easier for them.
            • by H3lldr0p ( 40304 )

              I really shouldn't get any deeper, but it's going to bug me if I don't ask.

              Yet maybe they haven't, and I don't need to make it easier for them.

              To do what, exactly? Gather info on you? You don't have to even go close and they'll be able to build a profile of who you are, what your name is, and what you're doing day to day. That was part of the EU's GDPR is about. Even that doesn't go far enough. It certainly doesn't force them to delete what they already gathered. Or to stop the targeted stuff from happening. You leave data everywhere you go, so I'm confused about what, exac

              • You have gotten way off track. The original conversation is why people fill in that huge form of every aspect of their lives in Facebook. If you are proposing that they might as well do it because Facebook can find everything in there out anyway, I don't accept that at all.
      • The scary part is that even if you hadn't created an account, they probably have all of that information anyways if enough people you know use Facebook and have tagged you in photographs on their service.

        The creepy part is that a lot of information can be derived about you based on the people you have friended. If it's only old acquaintances or classmates, they don't get much, but for regular users they can easily and accurately predict political affiliation and sexual orientation even if you don't fill
      • Simple: every last thing you post there is data-mined to within an inch of it's life and used to create a profile of you that they SELL to advertisers and whoever else can pay for it (like Cambridge Analytica, for instance) so they can leverage you into behaving the way THEY want you to (to buy things you otherwise wouldn't buy, or vote the way they want you to vote, or whatever). Furthermore you probably stay logged in even when you're not on Facebook.com itself, so every Facebook icon you see on the Inter
        • Well said.
      • It's funny, because I actually see ads on Facebook sometimes, but I've never responded to any. Well, except for hiding ads that I found offensive. I find Facebook to be fine for my uses.

      • I read a lot of stuff on Slashdot about how bad it is that Facebook knows everything about us, but y'all haven't successfully articulated just what I should fear.

        I (and I suspect many others) don't have the bent to evangelize to someone who -- in the wake of all kinds of studies, revelations, and developments showing precisely why people SHOULD care-- nevertheless doesn't seem to care... so I'm just writing to note that reciprocally, you have failed to articulate a sound basis for why people shouldn't care. It's not up to others to save you from yourself. Enjoy.

        • Ah, the old "It's not my job to educate you, SHITLORD!" which I suppose is not only restricted to tumblr anymore.

          On another note, it's exactly this kind of self-referential hysteria that has made me stop giving a shit about facebook and the data they collect. If your cause has merit, it will have evidence, which is why even today you can find people who will dutifully try to argue with someone denying global warming, using years of studies and data. Apparently in this case merely asking about the extent o

          • by lgw ( 121541 )

            Do you have a problem with a database of every Muslim in America or every Jew, or everyone who's gay? Can you see any way in which that might be used for evil?

            Are you familiar with the line "if you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him" from Cardinal Richelieu?

            Are you aware that employers routinely check the facebook profile of potential employees, looking for reasons not to hire?

            Overall, are you aware that some things that seem p

            • Overall, are you aware that some things that seem perfectly normal and sensible today will inevitably become unpardonable moral sins in a generation, but there's no telling which things. What do you want in your permanent record, to be used by a government or employer that does not have your best interests in mind, 20 years from now?

              So true. I know that /. is full of left wing types but the reality is that for decades the biggest abusers of these *has* been the left. SJWs embrace the following concepts:

              Hounding people over their politics is acceptable

              https://www.reuters.com/articl... [reuters.com] https://www.catholicnewsagency... [catholicnewsagency.com]

              Violence is OK as long as you're right and "they" are wrong

              http://thehill.com/policy/nati... [thehill.com]

              No, they can't just all get along if they don't follow the correct politics

              https://www.theodysseyonline.c... [theodysseyonline.com] https://www. [washingtonpost.com]

            • Do you have a problem with a database of every Muslim in America or every Jew, or everyone who's gay?

              Not if they send the names of everyone on list 1 to everyone on the other two, and so on.

              That'd make some mighty fine television.

          • Ah, the old "It's not my job to educate you, SHITLORD!"

            Well, yes (except for the "shitlord" addition). I don't make the rules. There are a bunch of old sayings that apply despite being much-used, including "be honest", "pick your battles", and "if you don't like it you can go fuck yourself".

      • The story we're commenting on is about the terrible possibility that I might not see certain ads on Facebook. That's a risk I'm willing to take.

        It doesn't work like that. For an average user, Facebook generates an extensive profile of where he visited from their huge partner network. They can develop his "age" from those site visits even if he lied. Ads are then be presented to him based on his profile across Facebook and the partner sites. It works the same for Google and their partners, many of whom are also partners of Facebook, probably leading to incidental but useful cross-sharing of information.

        The issue with the lawsuit is Facebook is sti

      • I read a lot of stuff on Slashdot about how bad it is that Facebook knows everything about us, but y'all haven't successfully articulated just what I should fear.
        What are the potential negative consequences if Facebook knows my real name and where and when I went to high school?

        So, let's start by correcting the inaccurate belief that all they know about you is the information you explicitly gave them. What they actually know is FAR greater than that.

        For instance, what about the information that others have shared about you? If any of your friends, colleagues, coworkers, or classmates uploaded their contacts list to make finding contacts easier, Facebook now knows everything your buddy had on you: all of your phone numbers, all of your e-mail addresses, all of your instant messagin

      • by Holi ( 250190 )
        Regardless of the name you use on Facebook, trust that they have your real name
    • by Anonymous Coward

      They can still get close enough.

      Got kids? Married? Lots of friends who are members of things like "Class of Ridgemont High 1987."

    • The second question is: Doesn't facebook know that and use the age group estimation derived from your browsing behavior rather than what you have entered?

      • Doesn't facebook know that and use the age group estimation derived from your browsing behavior rather than what you have entered?
        No, why would it?
        Not every web site visit has a "FB bug" following me. And my browsing behaviour has not changed the last 20 years, why would it?

        • by lgw ( 121541 )

          And my browsing behaviour has not changed the last 20 years, why would it?

          Some people change and grow over time, adjusting their values and interests due to life experience.

    • So that his friends and family can find him.
      OTOH if you really would want to USE FB to find a job, you might better have a second account.

      • And to continue the meme of using FB as your resume...

        Sanitize it. like the real resume you wrote. No unnecessary dates, especially education and distant experience. Ignore your high school graduation, nothing gained there. If you graduated from college, the HS is assumed, and if you see a job for which a HS diploma is required, well, you're going to be fine with other experience - trust me, if a HS diploma is a qualification, you're using FB for its intended purpose. that wasn't really the job you wanted

        • My FB account has no information about my jobs, only my High School and University.
          I live in Europe, no one is using FB to find job or for recruiting. None who is not my friend does see my profile anyway.

    • No, actually the first question that comes to mind is, why the ever-loving fuck would you use Facebook at all in the first place?
    • . . . for an intelligent comment here, getting to be quite rare.

      Now why would anyone care about this since it has been going on forever???? And American pathetic corporate biz shows how anti-experience has destroyed any real business in America today, which shows up in crapola design of anything and everything (evidently everyone has forgotten The Design of Everyday Things ????).

      I recall being forced down to nonexistence in the IT field, regardless if they even were aware of my contributions (used by
    • It doesn't matter. Facebook will figure out your age, gender, and interests in other ways: who your friends are, what you are interested in, which ads you click on, what other sites you visit.
  • Preferably kids who are just out of college and set away 100+ unsuccessful applications. Ones happy to spend from morning till night doing drudge work for little pay.
  • so sexual deviants can run recruitment ads for underage teens? ISIL can too? child porn ads?

  • by MrKaos ( 858439 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @10:00AM (#56710010) Journal

    There is an enabler.

    • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

      Union = abuser
      Weak-kneed employer who caves to union demands = enabler

      NIMBY = abuser
      City council who listens only to the loudest voice = enabler

  • by The Fat Bastard ( 5389025 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @10:02AM (#56710024)
    After I went back to school to get another degree ten years ago, I dropped my first degree from my resume. Most recruiters look for three years in each of the last three positions, so I list my experience from the last ten years. Since I get hired over the phone, most hiring managers are shocked to see that my beard is snow white. Never mind that the color of my beard is irrelevant to the job.
    • Damn, my beard has been snow white for more than a decade now. More than two. No wonder I get hired.

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Wow. You should really get that checked. Most people don't have Disney princesses growing on their faces.

    • by shanen ( 462549 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @03:18PM (#56711986) Homepage Journal

      Actually I was looking for the obligatory "I am shocked—shocked—to find that gambling is going on in here!" post. Of course in this case mapped to the discrimination against old people getting hired for technical work. White-bearded experience counts for much less in computer-related fields.

      Your comment was interesting, but I think the most interesting aspect is that you're still scrabbling around looking for work. Not fully clear from your comment, but that's how it comes across. I hope it's because you like variety, but I think most businesses these days want the smallest number of long-term employees possible.

      There's a deep mismatch here. We have long-term lives. If we starve to death between jobs, then that greatly reduces our future job prospects.

      Or another way to look at it is that companies want to have continuous revenue streams coming in, but they want to minimize the money that is flowing out, especially as salaries for the lower-level employees. The soulless and inhuman corporations are programmed to focus on profit maximization without worrying too much about the externalized human sources of that revenue.

      Me? I did a lot of scrabbling around in my younger days, but I never got to like it. I still enjoy working, but I'm not interested in the scrabbling now. However, I think it's your advocacy of partial truth that is bothering me the most. In my ontology of lies, I rank that as Level 2, which is mostly packed with lawyers and politicians and certain kinds of salespeople.

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      Wow, they never saw you in person before hiring? Wow, I would assume they would at least see you once.

  • by TigerPlish ( 174064 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @10:05AM (#56710044)

    Older workers need better job protection -- Too easy / tempting to let them go, chances of getting hired at a similar pay rate as the lost job are slim, and contrary to what people think, the days of fat retirements are long gone. Older workers are at great risk. Greater than other classes, I would say.

    But of course, the public at large don't see it like that, the politicians can't be bothered to care, and companies only care about moneymoneymoney.

    • by sinij ( 911942 )
      I think all workers need better job protection. There is no reason to be ageist in your advocacy and pretend that letting go of a young person is any less disruptive to their life than old person.
      • I think all workers need better job protection. There is no reason to be ageist in your advocacy and pretend that letting go of a young person is any less disruptive to their life than old person.

        So you're saying that it is not true that older workers take longer to get re-hired.. if at all? At or near the same level they were before?

        I hope you never find yourself in that situation. I think you'll find it.. educational.

        My intent isn't to be ageist, it is to illustrate that yes, different age brackets have different needs. Is any of this untrue?

      • by lgw ( 121541 )

        There is no reason to be ageist in your advocacy and pretend that letting go of a young person is any less disruptive to their life than old person.

        Once you're married, it's more disruptive. Once you have kids, it's more disruptive. Once you have a mortgage, it's more disruptive.

        So, maybe not age per se, but one does tend to accumulate reasons that losing's one's job is more disruptive.

    • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @10:50AM (#56710328)
      businesses are just that, businesses. People tend to be pretty rational when it comes to making money; albeit not always very nice about it. For example, you see some reverse age discrimination at Walmart where they prefer older workers because though they're slower they always show up for shifts.

      What I'm saying is this: by and large older workers are less productive. They take time off for their kids, their health, etc. They're not willing to work 60/hr a week with 20 of that unpaid in exchange for vague promises of promotion. There are a ton of other reasons too. So unless you've got a special case like Walmart where workers are so unreliable that it's worth taking the productivity hit for consistency or need highly specialized skills then older workers just don't make economic sense

      This is an economic reality we all should face. The sooner we do the sooner we can talk about what to do with all these under employed (or unemployed) workers. If you're a young'un reading this now you're either going to join the older set or die. Literally. It takes years to set up a structure to protect people since there's going to be a ton of resistance. Now's the time to start supporting change.

      As for that change, we need more retirement support and better wages. Maybe Social Security at an early age. Forcing employers to hire less productive old people is just going to be bad all around. The young guys will be mad when gramps can't keep up and the oldsters will work themselves into an early grave.
      • by lgw ( 121541 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @03:06PM (#56711920) Journal

        What I'm saying is this: by and large older workers are less productive.

        For a job like a Walmart associate where you learn the whole job in a few weeks? Sure. For an engineering position, where you accumulate years of wisdom about how not to do things? Not so much.

        • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          Even Wal-Mart associates should get better with more experience. You learn where everything is, which means when returns happen (or when clothing is tried on and not bought, or when new stock comes in), you can shelve them more quickly. When people ask where something is, you can point them at the exact product instead of hunting for it. And so on.

          Whether the employer sees value in that or not is another question, but the improvement exists (or at least should).

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        What I'm saying is this: by and large older workers are less productive. They take time off for their kids, their health, etc.

        Actually, you're not describing older workers there. Although the age at which people start having kids is going up, most people still have them in their thirties, not their forties or fifties. By the time you're at the age that most people think of as "older workers", the oldest kid is old enough to drive around the younger kids, so they aren't taking as much time off as younger workers for their kids.

        And health problems can happen to anybody. For older folks, you have more internal medicine issues; for

    • We don't need 'protectionism', we need companies to honor experience and expertise and pay for it, rather than pay some young idiots just out of school who don't know a goddamned thing about how the real world works, because they're naive and will accept low pay just to have a job.
    • Fortunately, there are companies who preferentially hire older workers. A major publisher I worked for recruited semi-retired persons because they had experience with the (shiney, new) mainframe they bought. Who promptly brought up a Linux partition for us young whipper-snappers (;-))
    • the days of fat retirements are long gone

      Nope, people just choose to spend their money instead of saving it for retirement. I save 4 times as much for retirement then how much I save/spend for cars. My goal to be able to retire at 55.

    • If it was a bad idea for companies to focus layoffs on older workers it would probably have shown itself by now, but if anything it seems like it's only accelerating, which would suggest there are good reasons for it.

      Don't get me wrong, by "good reasons" I mean reasons that benefit the companies and not the laid off workers. The first thing that comes to mind is that maybe the additional experience just isn't worth the additional salary when compared to someone with less experience. Maybe salary should b
  • by Anonymous Coward

    You had this story just a day or two ago!

  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @10:11AM (#56710098)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by Eloking ( 877834 )

      Here [slashdot.org], and I thought I saw it passing by much more recently on /. as well.

      That makes 2 stale stories in a row. *Pours bucket of water on msmash.* Wake up man, you're in the driver's seat!

      But that news is like...SO OLD!

      It's was December 2017! I don't even remember what I ate that day.

    • by Myrdos ( 5031049 )

      Hum, I had always read that as "Miss Mash". Live and learn!

  • Target Ads (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tempmpi ( 233132 ) on Friday June 01, 2018 @10:22AM (#56710156)

    I have nothing against targeted ads, but advertiser should be forced to reveal their target to the receiver of the ad. I think this would stop most of the abuse and would easy way to regulate this.

    • You should be against targeted ads because your privacy is being violated one way or another in order to target you.
      • You should be against targeted ads because your privacy is being violated one way or another in order to target you.

        But is it a violation of my privacy if I don't really mind data about myself and my actions being used in this way?

  • When I decided to "correct" my age on Facebook, the big question was: should I make myself 15 years older, or 15 years younger?

    Apparently, I chose poorly.

    The moral here is that whenever you're entering your age into some website, you should always pick either 13 or 21. There are no other ages that any reasonable person would start a profile with.

  • the CWA is bringing this suit.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    If you only post jobs to facebook I don't want to work for you.
    If you only look for jobs on facebook I don't want to hire you.
    If the young'uns are using other platforms (like other articles tell us so often) the targeting will be ineffective anyway.

  • Ageism is embedded and institutionalized, completely pervasive in the tech industry. I just turned 50 and thank my lucky stars that I have work. I'm thinking about studying math and programming to accomplish my own creative projects, and maybe someday write an app or two, but I have no illusions about every being hired. It's just not going to happen. It's like frickin' Logan's Run out there.

  • IANAL, but I did a short (one day) contract for a lawyer not long ago, and one of the things I learned on the assignment is that age is a protected class. It's not just "you can't discriminate on age" but that there are fairly strong penalties for doing so.

    The issue I think is that it's just been an assumed way for doing business, and the cost of litigation (another thing I learned at that assignment) and the *length* of litigation (minimum 18 months) makes it highly unlikely that any individual or small g

    • by rnturn ( 11092 )

      Yes, but only a complete moron would terminate someone and tell them that it was because ot their age. The way it's done is to claim it's an economic issue--healthcare costs is a popular one nowadays--and just try proving that the real reason was for anything else. I had a former employer lay off the entire data center staff. Every single one of us but one were over 40 but they played another popular card used to get rid of experienced staff: they added one of the under-40 desktop support guys to have that

  • Why do employers discriminate based upon age? Study after study has shown that older workers perform just as well as younger workers for most tasks. Ageism bias is ignorant.

    https://www.weforum.org/agenda... [weforum.org]
    https://www.techrepublic.com/a... [techrepublic.com]
    https://www.recode.net/2016/10... [recode.net]

    The only logical reason to discriminate against older workers is because health insurance costs in the US are far higher for older people.

    Is age discrimination less of a problem in countries that have single payer heath care?
  • ... that will put up with 'opportunities' and bullshit. Preferably from university with a degree, that they can hire cheap and rent out for lots of money. We have that type of recruting based shops in abundance here in Germany too. Douchebags that want to hire you for 35 Euros and rent you out for 150 Euros an hour. That's a game anyone in his right mind wouldn't want to play in his mid-40ies anymore anyway.

    When your older and have been in the business for long decades, people won't ask you for a quick hire

  • It seems to me that the responsibility of companies like Facebook for illegal ads on their platforms should be the same as the responsibility of ISPs for illegal file sharing on their platforms. It's the same principle. If people use my service in illegal ways, am I responsible or not? And if so, to what extent? We've been over this ground before, extensively. It shouldn't be treated like unexplored territory just because we're talking about different content.

  • If you're 21, nobody will be looking to hire you to manage their entire company. If your 51 like me, you shouldn't really be looking for entry-level jobs. There's a place for every age bracket.

    I've had to find a new job 3 times in the last 10 years. My age has never been an issue, as far as I could tell. I'm well-paid, doing a job I like, staying technical.

    Silicon Valley may be a different story. Maybe it's time to find work elsewhere!

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