How the online business model encourages prejudice

A lawsuit brought against Facebook for sexist job advertisements exposes the discriminatory nature of the online marketing

In September, a group of people searching for work in the US filed charges against Facebook and 10 other companies for discriminating against women by targeting certain job advertisements only at men. The employers, from sectors such as labouring and lorry driving, had used Facebook's ad-targeting tools to direct the opportunities at those they thought most suitable - and this did not include women. Although the outcome of the case has not yet been decided, it could - along with similar cases - have a seismic impact on the future of digital advertising and, consequently, on the future of the net.

Allegations of discrimination have been made against Facebook's advertising before. An investigation by ProPublica and the New York Times at the end of last year found that dozens of employers had used the platform to target job ads at particular age groups, meaning that those outside those ages did not see them. Around the same time, the Washington State attorney general's office launched a sting operation, to show how straightforward it was to use Facebook's targeting tools to prevent certain ethnic groups from seeing ads in the US: it placed 20 phoney ads for jobs, apartments, insurance and other services and deliberately excluded one or more ethnic minority groups from receiving the notification.