Facebook Ads Draws Class Action For Algorithmic Gender Bias

An advocacy group representing female truck drivers accused Meta Platforms, Inc META Facebook of steering ads for lucrative jobs away from women and older workers based on the type of role.
Real Women in Trucking filed the lawsuit with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Washington Post reports.
They alleged that the underlying algorithm powering Facebook's ad system is far more likely to show ads promoting jobs in certain blue-collar professions such as trucking, firefighting, manufacturing, and construction to men.
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Similarly, Facebook is more likely to show ads to female users for roles historically considered women's work, like housekeeping, home care, and child care.
Facebook delivers these ads in a biased fashion even when the marketer has deemed them eligible.
Peter Romer-Friedman, one of the group's lawyers, was previously involved in a discrimination case against Facebook that led to a 2019 settlement in which the social media company agreed to make sweeping changes to its ad platform.
In 2019, Facebook agreed to stop allowing advertisers to use gender, age, and Zip codes to market housing, credit, and job openings to its users.
That change came after a Washington state attorney general probe and a ProPublica report found that Facebook was letting advertisers conceal housing ads from African Americans and other minorities.
In 2022, Meta agreed to build a new automated advertising system that the company says will help ensure that housing-related ads are delivered to a more equitable population.
Price Action: META shares traded higher by 1.89% at $122.72 on the last check Friday.
Image by Ohmydearlife from Pixabay

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