Discussion that Facebook management is discriminatory and illegal not to deliver recruitment ads to elderly users

By using the user's age element for filtering, Facebook handles job advertisements that are not delivered to older users. There is a debate in the United States that this act violates the law prohibiting discrimination by age, or whether it is promoting illegal behavior.

Dozens of Companies Are using Facebook to Exclude Older Workers From Job Ads - ProPublica
https://www.propublica.org/article/facebook-ads-age-discrimination-targeting

Facebook uses advertising revenue as a weapon to grasp user's personal information such as hobbies and preferences as well as user attributes such as age, gender, residential area, etc., and to advertise to target users who are right for products and services Is raised. Although it is a pleasant Facebook advertisement for advertisers because of high efficiency of PR activities due to high accuracy of target advertisement and excellent cost-effectiveness, there are indications that promoting legal violation over job advertisement is promoted.


According to The New York Times and ProPublica, mobile phone company Verizon has posted a job advertisement for soliciting financial analysts on Facebook in November 2017. This ad was set to display only for feeds of Facebook users from 25 to 36 years old. In other words, Verizon advertises from 25 to 36 years old, so that advertisements were not displayed to hundreds of millions of users out of this range.

In addition to Verizon, major advertisers such as Amazon, Goldman Sachs, and Target are also offering similar advertisements on Facebook with The New York Times and It is clear from the survey of ProPublica.

These advertisements with a limited age range are characterized in most cases by relatively young users. Conversely, it means that job recruitment was not included in the eyes of users of older age groups. For that reason, experts have raised questions from the question of whether they are not compliant with the "Age Discrimination in Employment Act" established by the federal government in 1967. Debra Katz, a lawyer working in the state of Washington, criticizes Facebook for "it's totally illegal."


However, it is the employer that the Age Discrimination Law in employment prohibits discriminatory treatment, advertising media such as Facebook is not subject to direct regulation. So, legally, there is no other choice but to pursue Facebook and other responsibilities as "aid" to encourage illegal discriminatory treatment.

According to ProPublica, it is not only Facebook, but also Google and LinkedIn that we offer recruitment advertisements that exclude users over 40 years old. In response to inquiries from ProPublica, Google responded that "Advertisers will not prevent advertisements from being displayed based on the user's age", LinkedIn said that they made changes in the advertisement display system, and the response was divided It is said that it is.

According to Survey of Job service SourceCon, Facebook has 5 million active users per month, while Facebook has 2 billion active users per month, while users on LinkedIn, which is a prerequisite for business use, are 530 million, It is said that the diversity of the target users is unmatched. Therefore, for advertisers offering job advertisements, Facebook advertisement seems to have the charm of approaching users who can not get on LinkedIn and others. For example, if a hospital is seeking a nurse, it is unlikely that a nurse is using LinkedIn. On the other hand, since Facebook is the majority of women in nurses, Facebook advertisements can reach the target of hospitals that are more advertisers.


The argument that age-targeted advertisements are illegal for discriminatory treatment is likely to be raised because of the influence of Facebook with overwhelmingly large number of users in advertising strategies in digital contents is. As for Facebook, it is pointed out that so-called fake news and propaganda originating from Russia had a major influence on the presidential election, and the eyes of the public against the responsibility of the giant Facebook Facebook is not only from a legal point of view but also from an ethical point of view It seems that I have no choice but to be tough.