Facebook allows employers to target job ads based on age, and that might be illegal
Facebook has just come under even more scrutiny today for its lack of oversight into algorithmic ad targeting following a new joint investigation from The New York Times and ProPublica, this time focused on potential age discrimination. Similar to how ProPublica illustrated last year and again just last month how housing ads on Facebook could exclude users by so-called “ethnic” and “multicultural” affinities, this new report shows how the social network also lets advertisers exclude certain age groups for job ads.
Instead of claim that it wants to do better, as Facebook has with regards to racially discriminatory housing ads, the company seems to be taking a far more defensive stance here. In a blog post titled, “This Time, ProPublica,...