Facebook accused of not showing insurance ads to women and older people in violation of civil rights laws
Facebook can be sued over biased ad algorithm, says court
The case centers around Samantha Liapes, a 48-year-old woman who turned to Facebook to find an insurance provider.
I'm sorry, whatnow?
So now if I search for car insurance and Facebook shows me ads for a buttplug from Kickstarter, I can sue them? Because we're all going to very rich, if so.
That's how I shop. I scroll through loads of random thoughts and pictures by friends and family and people I barely know until someone tries to sell me insurance. What's the problem exactly?
I find this very unconvincing. Ads don't offer a service. They're not like a search engine or the likes. So why should ads have to target all groups equally?
So, is it actual discrimination, or is it just that their data Facebook has shows that other ads are better suited to them, statistically, in terms of profit? I'm sure all sorts of patterns show up in the quantity of data they have, and algorithms show ads based on these patterns. It's possible that gender is a factor, but it seems just as likely that there are other patterns (perhaps some common to a given gender) that factor into this result.
Edit: To be clear, I did not read the article, because I don't actually care that much. I just find statistics and patterns interesting. Having worked in insurance in the past, I was always curious about which exact information factored into premiums, and in what way. I know everything from marital status, to job, education, location, age, credit score, and much more, factored into decisions, and not always in ways you may expect -- all based on statistics.
I guess in the technical sense of the term any targeting of advertising is discrimination.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Facebook can be sued over allegations that its advertising algorithm is discriminatory, a California state court of appeals ruled last week.
The decision stems from a class action lawsuit filed against Facebook in 2020, which accused the company of not showing insurance ads to women and older people in violation of civil rights laws.
In a September 21st ruling, the appeals court reversed a previous decision that said Section 230 (which protects online platforms from legal liability if users post illegal content) shields Facebook from accountability.
The appeals court concluded that the case “adequately” alleges that Facebook “knew insurance advertisers intentionally targeted its ads based on users’ age and gender” in violation of the Unruh Civil Rights Act.
It also found significant similarities between Facebook’s ad platform and Roommates.com, a service that exceeded the protections of Section 230 by including drop-down menus with options that allowed for discrimination.
Facebook’s ad algorithm has faced scrutiny for years now, with a federal lawsuit filed in 2018 accusing the company of enabling housing discrimination and subsequent studies backing up these claims.
The original article contains 274 words, the summary contains 178 words. Saved 35%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
You buy ads with the target demographic criteria. That's often people with jobs, newlyweds etc.
It's not an "equal right" to be targeted by the ads.
as if not use an ad blocker.
Someone is angry because they’re not getting ads on Facebook?
That’s a switch.
It's not about that actually, it's discrimination.
These people are still seeing ads, but not the ones which they need at their age
Yeah, I understand that, which brings up the second baffling point that someone went to facebook to search for insurance providers in the first place.
As much as most don’t like Facebook, I honestly don’t see why Facebook is at fault here. They’ve got a platform where advertisers come on, say “I want to sell ads to people Ages X-Y , Gender A, in Geography I, J and K”, and they serve ads accordingly. What are they supposed to do? Tell the advertisers “No no no, you need to also pay for ads on these other demographics that you explicitly excluded”? The plaintiff should be suing advertisers, not Facebook, for intentionally not targeting them.