I really don't see why it should be illegal or even morally questionable at all to target ads at young or old people. It's what everyone already does with extra steps (TV timeslots, picking certain magazines) and it doesn't make sense to make a company waste money including 20 year olds in their Medicare supplement ad targeting.
I feel like it depends on the product. There are, for instance, more strict laws regarding the ways that financial institutions can lend money because of historical issues with unfair discrimination. And regarding things like that, it makes a lot of sense. https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0347-your-equal-credit...
I really don't see why it should be illegal or even morally questionable at all to target ads at young or old people.
It's not. But what you're positing is a gross oversimplification of the situation.
Nobody says you have to advertise toys in AARP Magazine. But there are federal rules governing the advertising of certain products, such as credit cards. That's what's happening here.
I got one when I was 12, but that was also 20 years ago now. It was a business card and had a credit limit of $8,000. My parents weren’t on the card. It confused me then almost as much as it confuses me now. Maybe their income counted as household income?
I got it because they didn’t like to use their credit cards online. I used it to buy my own PC.
Ultimately, I don't think minors can legally enter such a contract, so if he did rack up debt and the card company pursued it, it might have been dismissable if his age then came to light.
What I think is different about targeted online advertising is that the ads targeted at specific groups may never be visible to other groups. A company can outright lie to a pre-selected group who they consider do not have the knowledge, skill or time to counter the lies.
There is a non-zero chance that TV timeslots are seen by people not in the targeted group. A billboard in a school zone may have a high chance of being seen by naive young moms but the canny young moms will also see it, along with dads and grandparents picking up kids, not to mention hundreds of other people who live and work in the area.
> it doesn't make sense to make a company waste money
I get outright scam ads on YouTube, from YouTube once a week at least, and nothing ever happens to make them stop because I don't care enough to invest the insane amount of effort it will take to reach someone at YouTube that would care enough to stop it. And then the next outright scam add will pop up. So I am not sure by what mechanism this accountability functions if it can't stop blatant scams on YouTube adds.
You can report them fairly quickly, there should be a "report" button directly on/under the ad itself. I'm not sure how effective it is at stopping these sort of ads, but it is a step you can easily take.
I've never reported a Youtube ad, but I have reported two Facebook ads that lied in their displayed URL.
The the ads were for scummy "wonder-supplements", but displayed the URL of a newspaper that had nothing to do with the ad, I guess to try and get some legitimacy.
I couldn't write what was wrong with the ad in my report, only choose from some very broad categories, and both the reports were rejected with "ad is not in voilation of our guidelines".
So the law should be against deceptive, false, or otherwise misleading ads. The law shouldn't be against targeted advertising based on age or any other socioeconomic grouping.
Yes, but practically how does that work? It's fine to make misleading adverts illegal, but then if you only choose to show them to segments that are naive about the law and never make complaints, perhaps you'll get away with it?
Thinking out loud: Maybe companies should be required to keep an archive of all advertising. They'd display it on their own website and adverts that were considered misleading or had any upheld complaints would be necessarily marked?
Banning age discrimination is _how_ the law is against deceptive, false, and discriminating ads.
Britain had exactly this issue a few years back with Cambridge Analytica and targeted facebook advertising (the biggest scandal was actually the extra campaign funding that was spent on it), it wasn't until the scandal was long over that the actual list of adverts was released and people found them horrifying, but the people who were against them had _never_ seem them at the actual time because it was so heavily targeted.
Targeting messages is another form of hiding them and dividing people up.
Modern day politics thinks All Tracking and Targeting are morally wrong. And anything against that are politically incorrect. This isn't just Twitter or Social Media, it is mainstream media also painting the same picture.
A perception question: if the New York Times records every story I read on the site in the last month as a registered user, and uses that to determine what ads it shows me, is that 'tracking'?
Out of 5,877 vote, 83% thinks that is "tracking".
Which means in the modern day perception, any observation with regards to its user or anyone will be considered as "tracking". Which violate their privacy. The modern day usage of "privacy" has been twisted to mean more like anonymous.
Let's assume they are the same in literal sense. The problem is the current trend is about Zero Tracking, which means in the above example NYT could not even record the article their user have read on their site.
And it was a poll from Benedict Evans. [1], Thanks to him there is at least some sanity still on the internet.
It is an overly broad and reductive concept but there is an implicit carve out - if it is literally required for the function. Putting aside the protocol captain obvious level of "a computer needs to know when your IP address asked for it to send the webpage to you" level, an online store with no tracking of transactions would be a useless mock up. No payments would be placed nor orders delivered.
What if Facebook created a look-alike audience for a reverse mortgage product, and turns out it never showed it to anyone under 30. Did facebook just violate their own policy? But it's OK because an algorithm did it?
"Someone used the internet to do something illegal."
This is not really news.
"Someone used this specific product on the internet to do something illegal."
Still not really news.
"Some small business you've never heard of used an iPhone to do something illegal"
I don't think this would have gotten any coverage.
"Someone used Facebook to do something illegal."
Why is this news?
"You have these instances in which but for Facebook’s algorithms steering these opportunities away, someone may have been able to get one of these life-changing opportunities from a business that would have given it to them.”
This is sort of a load of crap, given that we're talking about advertising. These same people probably turn right around and complain about "predatory advertisers" maliciously offering dangerous credit cards to disadvantaged groups.
And why isn't this guy upset at the people in these companies who are making the illegal targeting decisions in the first place, as opposed to FB? As far as I can see the only thing FB failed to do here is fail to automatically detect that the subject matter of these specific advertisements were subject to a legal restriction on targeting that doesn't apply in the general case.
EDIT: In fact upon further review it's not even clear to me that any of the behavior described here is actually illegal. Targeting advertising is not the same as discrimination in making credit decisions, which is the only thing actually identified as illegal in the article. The article only says that this is against FB policy and mentions some kind of a civil lawsuit and settlement.
Though I see your argument, I feel you've abstracted the message too far, thus stripping it of its meaning and making your implied analogy falter.
"[corporation] did something [illegal and morally reprehensible]" tends to get lots of news regardless of the method. Credit card providers fit the bill as corporations, and discrimination by age fits the bill for falling afoul of both laws and current established morals. Facebook only adds salt to the wound because their toolkit enables it so readily.
Adding one more grain of sand still doesn’t make it a pile.
Keep adding grains, any one grain will not make a pile.
Yet after a lot of grains you still have a pile.
I think you are engaging in the same kind of fallacy. The individual grains that make a pile might be insignificant, but the pile definitely is. After you’ve spotted that you have a pile it is of interest to know how the grains got there. Facebook is definitely a pile. What Facebook does adds to the pile, what people do with Facebook adds to the pile. Seeing this pile and seeing people keep adding to it is worthy of interest.
I think any company should be able to target ads by age. The Ad a teenager would click on is different than one a 40something would click on. Ads are expensive, so it makes sense to target the ad to make it relevant to the user.
Facebook clearly does have a bug here, where they didn't warn the ad buyer that they were excluding an age range. Someone operating in good faith could have one ad for 18-29, another for 31-40, and one for 41 and up. According to the 'outrage' this is highly illegal. But clearly a simple mistake, an off by one error if you would :D. Facebook knows you don't want to excluded anyone, so they should warn about the excluded age range. No matter where it shows up.
Also, is advertising to (demographic) most likely to buy your service really exclusion/discrimination? To the level of a crime? I'm unconvinced I agree it should be.
I don’t think any ad company should be able to target people based on their age. I think ad companies should be able to target based on their context. If the context is primarily younger people then you’ll hit your market, but won’t exclude the odd older person that is also interested.
> What about recreational drugs (incl tobacco and alcohol)
Alcohol and tobacco advertising is banned or massively regulated in most countries. Facebook circumvents rules in various places due to their media platform being newer than the rules or because Facebook just sort of ignores the rule.
It’s not hard to find good sources stating Facebook still advertise tobacco, though you appear not to have noticed the links stating this fact.
Here are some more recent links.
“Smoking giants are flouting rules set by Facebook and Instagram”
As always, regardless of the digital or print medium, Big Tobacco (& others) have always tried to flout the rules. Same goes for Alcohol and Gambling ad bans.
The article states that they moved of the ads platform. If people pose with a cigarette and it's allowed by content guidelines of the platform and country, would you expect to have it censored?
If I post a picture that I am smoking you think they should delete it cause I'm advertising it?
It rather changes the equation if you are paid by a tobacco company to hold a cigarette in a photo.
‘On Instagram, Big Tobacco’s influencers post glamorised images of vape products with hashtags such as #idareyoutotryit and captions such as “feeling Vype AF”.’
(From my link).
That’s why I included the last link. Facebook have said the right things but kept doing what they want - this has been the pattern with other things they have done too.
Why? I understand the argument for restricting access to things needed to function (housing, banking, etc). But I made a flashy twitch shooter. Why is it wrong for me to advertise by age?
Ads cost money, why is it in the public good that I spend money to bother people with ads they'll never take part in?
I think companies should only be able to target by site. For instance if you sell tires, you should buy advert on a car forum.
All other forms of targeting is a manipulation and should be illegal along with any form of tracking.
Who even uses dedicated forums anymore? Outside Hacker News and subreddits, the only one I somewhat infrequently visit is xda-developers and that's it.
A value is also, and not to a small part, generated by the group admins and moderators - which is also why there have been a fair share of controversies regarding subreddits whose mods sold out (e.g. r/wallstreetbets).
Fostering a community is hard work... kicking out spammers, fraudsters and peddlers of illegal material (cp and DMCA), dealing with trolls and shills, directing newbies to useful resources for example. Without moderation (or too lax moderation criteria) your forum will end up overrun with legally questionable material (4chan, 8chan, 8kun), alt-right conspiracy theories (Parler, gab.ai), porn (r/worldpolitics) or questionable "advice" (r/legaladvice).
The problem is that moderating content is rarely positively rewarded - HN with the constant praise of u/dang for their moderation work is the example proving the rule. You're too lax? Users complain that the community is "devolving" from its purpose. You're too strict? People will raise off-site shitstorms or run organized brigading attacks.
This is why group admins deserve to be compensated for their efforts (and in the case of FB mods, way more compensation given the constant onslaught of cp, gore and other extremely vile stuff).
They manage the community, if you have unmoderated groups you get 4chan and similar which no-one wants to advertise on.
Also it incentivises moderating groups rather than just letting them be and doing the bare minimum.
I still don't like the idea but entirely for the reason that it adds financial incentives to demand moderators force groups to be advertiser friendly in more ways than just removing toxic content. If advertisers don't like something it will simply be neglected in comparison to the more advertising relevant ideas.
You do realise this is the exact argument that Facebook themselves make when people say 'the value is generated by the community' yet FB rake in billions?
People who are willing to put up with reduced volume and velocity of content in exchange for content not all being targeted at the absolute bottom of the barrel like you get on "mass market" platforms that attempt to cater to every niche and allow the internet riff raff into every niche in the process.
The set of people who visit a car forum is very different to the set of people who need to buy tires for their car.
If you want to increase awareness of your innovation, you might want to target exactly those people who aren't car hobbyists and don't visit car forums. Same if you are selling a product specifically designed to be easy to use for non-experts.
Often on OTA TV you see nothing but ads for "old people" products, not just things that "old people dig" (Black Sabbath?) but for things aimed at the indignities of age (adult diapers, ...) as well as the people who will file a fake medicare claim on your behalf,...
You could easily got the whole day and see mostly ads for things you could spend government services on, lawyers who might help you if you are hit by a car (and you have a slam dunk case) -- the one thing you might see advertised that people spend their own money on is cars. I guess if they didn't have any cars nobody would get hit by a car and need a personal injury lawyer. Scam and near-scam financial services targeted at the elderly is another big theme.
Add that up and if you're under 50, TV sends messages that "I want to die before I get old", "everybody else is just out to chisel from the government", etc. It makes me wonder if taking Grandma's phone away so she can't get scammed is worth her not being able to call 911.
Because there is no ad targeting by age on TV, TV is flooded by old people ads that drive away even a middle aged audience. By the time we get old we won't be watching TV because of it. If TV had age-targeted ads it might be tolerable to watch again.
That’s not a feature of targeting, but of declining audience. There’s enough injured people watching TV in waiting rooms that structured settlement ads have a ROI.
The reality is that you could easily segment the tv audience in the 80s and 90s. There was a time when dudes would tune into Wheel of Fortune to gawk at Vanna White. CNN once attracted a high end audience.
Likewise, the ads on the Spider-Man Saturday cartoon, GI-Joe, Dr Quinn Medicine Woman, and Nightline were very different, and targeted by age.
>Also, is advertising to (demographic) most likely to buy your service really exclusion/discrimination?
Hi! I work at a bank, that specializes in Credit Cards. I take a bunch of mandated training. The answer to your question is a
RESOUNDING YES
It is DEFINITELY discrimination for me to exclude Black people from lending money, or from OFFERING (aka advertising) to lend money. It is discrimination for me to offer different rates to Seniors than non seniors. It is discrimination for me to offer different TYPES (think: low APR with annual fee) of credit cards to poor people.
I'm not sure if FB should be in trouble, but the credit card issuer will have to explain this to the regulators.
How is any advertising for credit products legal, then? Each TV channel you might advertise on will have known-to-you differences in how often particular demographics will view it, which in principle means that you're excluding someone. While sure, a 35 year old professional might be watching soap operas at 1pm on a Wednesday, it's far more likely to be a senior, so advertising then excludes the non-retired demographic.
Good question! Discrimination can pop up at many points throughout the on boarding process, so it is important that you check who your people are often and at multiple check points.
At the point of advertising, we check things like: demographics of who viewed the add (sometimes we have to run ADDITIONAL targeted adds to balance out an initial add placement), demographics of who "clicked" to our website, demographics of who applied
Are all possible places to monitor. Also, we get to use FUN MATH!
Hmmm... ok. The antidote I shared is when I was hanging out with the mortgage folks. I assumed it was applied to the credit card division. It is surely possible, and an acceptable solution.
The mortgage bit is the key there. Red-lining started out as a phenomena in mortgage offerings, so it makes sense that they'd be going over and above to keep their noses clean. Credit cards as a general thing though? Nah. Though I'd be stoked to see that change in the years to come.
It’s not discrimination — pricing is based on cost, actuarial risk in the case of life insurance. There are even pooled models where otherwise too risky people can get insurance.
Discrimination comes in when you make decisions or steer business based on a protected attribute. If you do a mailing and exclude ethnic Jewish names, that’s discrimination. If you advertise in a catholic church bulletin, but not at a synagogue, that isn’t.
I just applied for private life insurance. I do think it's possible what this industry does as a matter of standard practice probably is discrimination, but they legitimize it through technocratic means. They'll say something like there's an average risk profile that rises over time with age. The way they further meat this out is by intrusively inspecting open medical history and repeating pedantic questions to you about that medical history. If you pass the pedantic questions, you get a lower rate based on demonstrated medical history.
So, I think my perception would be a little bit of both.
So if I choose not to advertise a credit product during NBA games which have a high black audience, but advertise during soccer games high white viewership, is that discrimination?
I think you certainly correct if someone applies directly excluding them on race is not only violation of law, but a jerk move. This seems more like it has to do with intention than actual execution.
I have NO idea! I know some financial institutions advertise (and sponsor) really big sport events with viewership that ranges in the 10s of millions. It is possible there is a distinction between "We are a company, remember our logo" and "we are a company, use our credit card".
I do know that proxy variables are just as bad as discrimination variables. So, if I approve based on zip code, and zip code is highly correlated with a protected class - that is not legal (think: red lining practices).
But it gets tricky. If black people use pay day lenders, can I decline because I see pay day lenders on your credit history? Not directly, but I can decline if I see lots of "open lines of credit" or "delinquent loans".
In my area, we also go back over our variables to look for "accidentally discrimination" e.g. no one would expect that: high income, large down payment, expensive car loan, commission based income would correlate with a protected class - but maybe it does, so we better check!
"This is not an offer to lend" is a disclaimer that the ad isn't itself an offer to extend credit to whoever happens to see it - you have to apply and be approved first and they don't guaranteed they will offer you any lending products at all. It's usually followed up by language like "subject to credit approval."
sure, but the OP was suggesting that "advertising" was the same as "offering" to anyone who happens to see the ad (in context of discrimination) ... doesn't seem to be usable.
> It is discrimination for me to offer different rates to Seniors than non seniors. It is discrimination for me to offer different TYPES (think: low APR with annual fee) of credit cards to poor people.
Accounts are often free to young people(<26)in Belgium, as well as in other European countries. Is that not discrimination?
Illegal Discrimination is determined by the jurisdiction you are in. Belgium will have different laws than than the US
Laws typically PROTECT vulnerable populations. Young people might be correlated with poor and uninformed, and there by entitled to protections. Likewise, Seniors may also correlate with underemployed and mentally impaired, and there by entitled to protections.
Note also that there is an important difference between the two scenarios:
1) 2 IDENTICAL products, but one is FREE
2) 2 SIMILAR products, but one exchanges convenience for cost
In the first example (similar to your example), one is DEFINITELY better (the free one), and CAN be targeted to people- because it is DEFINITELY better
In the first example (similar to my credit card), neither is DEFINITELY better than the other - it is a little more complex! And we have a higher burden showing that it is OK to offer JUST one to a protected class.
The idea that a law or regulation would prevent you from advertising based on demographics is absurd, and we should build a future without these kinds of insane dependencies.
There are protected classes by law. If anything the trend has been to extend them.
Advertising is a bit funny of course. If we're talking about magazine advertising, for example, there's nothing keeping you from advertising in a magazine that's overwhelmingly read by women, wealthy white guys, or black people. However, the law frowns on explicitly targeting (or excluding) a protected class.
I don't think we should dismantle them. I agree with others in this thread that not offering an option is exclusion. Because excluding people from important things like banking or housing leads to a worse society. And because people have excluded [group] before in an attempt to limit the reasonable risk of doing business in society. Laws are required to prevent that kinda behavior.
> I think any company should be able to target ads by age.
I think private companies should not exist and advertisement should be strictly illegal as a mass manipulation technique.
Profit and the engineering of consent are the explanation why people are starving or sleeping on the streets despite there being an abundance of resources to be wasted by companies and rich people.
I wouldn't go so far, but I did always think it was funny economist like to stipulate how markets work with "rational actors", failing to acknowledge just how much advertising (an utterly massive industry) drives people away from being rational actors.
Rational actors can still be deceived or wrong. It doesn't cease to make them rational to think smoke coming from the hills means a fire. It also explains how price manipulation techniques can work, such rising prices causing people to rush out and buy before it rises further. More reasons why false advertising is an offense along with the fights sparked by pissed off customers and fraud adjacency.
Beating up on rational actors on is a pretty tired take akin to deriding psychiatry because of Freud's Oedipus Complex. Which is ignoring the contextually it made sense with what we now know as Westermarcke effect combined with the norms of his time. His privledged son clients, being upper class were raised by nannies as the norm. Now put yourself in the proverbial Oedipus's shoes and imagine richer person who rules over you and directs your life direction and has sex with a hot woman you are attracted to. Sounds understandable except that they are your father and mother. With the lack of bonding in the life style it is both more consistent with modern proven effects and showing how society's twisted norms deeply screwed people up.
Wow, that escalated quickly. And this may be a hot take deserving of more thought... but I don't think companies existing is why there is homelessness nor general food insecurity. I think it' more than likely there's another, more important factor in play.
I was so perplexed because I thought maybe they weren't targeting people under age 25 specifically because of some kind of anti-predation-of-young-people regulation.
I could just as easily seen an outrage that Facebook was showing credit card ads to 12 year olds.
Specifically excluding minors from viewing ads for financial products wouldn't be illegal according to the wikipedia quoted above
>unlawful for any creditor to discriminate against any applicant, with respect to any aspect of a credit transaction, on the basis of [...] age (provided the applicant has the capacity to contract);
FB actually has a really strict automated blocker on ads it thinks are in protected categories. Regular ads get flagged falsely all the time. So if FB missed some it's not for lack of trying.
Okay then - without running afoul of Gödel's incompleteness theorems list everything they need to cover without errors.
There are few things more annoying to engineers than the Dunning-Kreugers who treat inability to do the literal impossible of being malace and assume "more than me" means infinite.
What I don't get is, why is it a problem that young adults don't get told to get credit cards enough?
I get and agree that the companies shouldn't discriminate by age, as in turn away people who are of legal age to buy the product or service. But is it really discrimination to not urge everyone equally much to buy it?
In this case it seems to go both ways. Some credit card products are only advertised to younger people, while others are targeted at people above a certain age.
I don’t really see the issue, age is just used at a rough way of filtering out those who aren’t the target consumer.
You can't control your age just like you can't control your skin colour. Ageism is akin to racism (however an exception for adult only products should be in place)
Without any evidence that they actually turn away non-target customers it seems like a stretch to call age-targeted advertising 'ageism'. Could you perhaps elaborate on this?
That’s a fair point, but some product just aren’t relevant for people beyond certain age ranges. Age isn’t used to discriminate, it just a cost control by not showing ads to people who won’t react to it anyway.
To some extend all targetted ads are discriminating if we want to go that route.
I don't buy this in the context of advertising. If a company selling do-rag's or haircare products for the hair type found in most black people targeted primarily black Americans would that be racism? No. Not in the malicious sense of the word at least. That should be perfectly within their rights as an organization.
Not to mention that people like Rachel Dolezal and Shaun King probably already pass as black to the algorithm, so they wouldn't be put at a disadvantage by the colour of their skin anyway.
The Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) is a United States law (codified at 15 U.S.C. § 1691 et seq.), enacted 28 October 1974,[1] that makes it unlawful for any creditor to discriminate against any applicant, with respect to any aspect of a credit transaction, on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, or age (provided the applicant has the capacity to contract);[2] to the fact that all or part of the applicant's income derives from a public assistance program; or to the fact that the applicant has in good faith exercised any right under the Consumer Credit Protection Act. [a]
The Unruh Civil Rights Act is a piece of California legislation that specifically outlaws discrimination based on sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, age, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, citizenship, primary language, or immigration status. [b]
Not a lawyer, but a bank employee. Steering a potential customer toward or away from a product or products on a protected basis, including in marketing materials, is a huge no-no.
I mean, I get it, but isn't it also just a little ridiculous to think that someone lending money would not legitimately want to use a measure of creditworthiness, which might have some correlation with age?
Credit score (or credit worthiness) is an indicator or reflection of how likely someone has been to pay his/her debts over time. You want a measure that indicates some track record to not have any correlation with someone's age? That's almost as nonsensical and headscratch-worthy as the job listings that ask for 5 years of experience in <xyz> for an entry level position.
Sometimes trying to be so fair, you throw intelligence out the window.
Did I miss something, I thought Facebook sold advertising based on cohorts? That's surely just as discriminating? I seem to remember age ranges being part of that as well, but even without that specificity a cohort will naturally select for cultural groupings, which will include delineations like age, race, social standing etc.
Because I get advertising from insurance companies based on my age literally every day (explicitly saying "premiums will go up massively on your next birthday" and calling out my age specifically).
Targeting by age is not discrimination; do you want me to send credit card ads to 12-year-olds? Now if they go directly to your site and apply, that is a much different story.
If you're making determinations on whether to show an ad to someone based on their age, you're literally discriminating based on age. Like, that's the definition of the word. You're treating different categories of things (i.e. people) differently based on a characteristic (i.e. age). Not only are you discriminating, you're discriminating against a protected class.
Now to handle your absurd question about sending credit card ads to children: Facebook policies already cover this. From Facebook's advertising policies:
Facebook prohibits advertisers from using our ads products to discriminate against people. This means that advertisers may not (1) use our audience selection tools to (a) wrongfully target specific groups of people for advertising (see Advertising Policy 7.1 on Targeting), or (b) wrongfully exclude specific groups of people from seeing their ads; or (2) include discriminatory content in their ads. Advertisers are also required to comply with applicable laws that prohibit discrimination (see Advertising Policy 4.2 on Illegal Products or Services). These include laws that prohibit discriminating against groups of people in connection with, for example, offers of housing, employment, and credit.
---
Obviously not sending ads to 12 years wouldn't be wrongful discrimination, since minors can't enter into legally binding contracts. But to be clear, not sending ads to 12 years is discrimination. It's just not considered wrongful.
Discrimination means choice. Faceboogers Anti-Choice Policy is going to cause lots of handwringing. The only important implication for society is if any attorneys can make money off of this, that is the most important part of anti-discrimination policies.
>unlawful for any creditor to discriminate against any applicant, with respect to any aspect of a credit transaction, on the basis of [...] age (provided the applicant has the capacity to contract)
Children don't have the capacity to contract, so excluding them is lawful.
reply