And they asked Facebook to show it specifically to people who have African American multicultural affinity.
Facebook, apparently, complied.
Federal law prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of age and race, including in advertising open jobs.
(Tendernesss CEO, Julio Fernandez, didnt respond to The Markups requests for comment.)
This is not the first time Facebook has been accused of allowing discrimination on its platform.
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The company is stilldefending another lawsuit, filed by federal housing authorities.
The bulk of the legal issues centered on the way much of online advertising works, including Facebooks.
Its written policies ban discrimination, it has said.
And targeting can sometimes be innocuous.
So why was The Markup still able to find a discriminatory job ad?
Channick didnt respond to a question about whether Facebooks automated controls always work.
Facebook had forbidden the use of multicultural categories for targeting in job ads.
Thats what the Department of Housing and Urban Development argues in itslawsuit.
The ads were posted both before and after Facebooks policy change.
Housing and job ads, she said, went disproportionately to women.
What has Facebook done about it?
Facebook then removes certain demographic targeting choices from that ads menu of options.
And Facebook began requiring advertisers to accept anagreementpromising not to discriminate.
The company also promised to research bias in its algorithms.
But researchers and civil rights activists say that theyre frustrated the company hasnt released any findings.
One internal studyreportedlyfound bias against users who had been categorized as matching the African American multicultural affinity category.
Just a few weeks ago, Facebook created teams to study racial bias on its platforms.
Wait, isnt discrimination illegal?
California law bans intentional discrimination in places of public accommodation, including on websites.
Look, they wrote the algorithm, Brody told The Markup.
No one knows how the algorithm works except them.
They are responsible for everything the algorithm does.
Its one of the most pressing examples of why we need to reform this antiquated law, he said.
Internet exceptionalism rationales should not stand in the way of upholding longstanding principles of fairness and non-discrimination.
This article wasoriginally published on The Markupby Jeremy B. Merrill and was republished under theCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativeslicense.
