Facebook accused of not showing insurance ads to women and older people in violation of civil rights laws

cyu@sh.itjust.works to Technology@lemmy.ml – 126 points –
Facebook can be sued over biased ad algorithm, says court
theverge.com
28

You are viewing a single comment

It's not about that actually, it's discrimination.

These people are still seeing ads, but not the ones which they need at their age

Yeah, I understand that, which brings up the second baffling point that someone went to facebook to search for insurance providers in the first place.

You're baffled people went on one of the most used website in the world to search for something. bruh…

Yes, I am baffled that anyone, with Facebook’s reputation for ads, selling personal information, etc, would choose to search for insurance carriers there instead of any number of other options that aren’t that big a leap away from Facebook, bruh.

There are so many people who literally think Facebook is the internet and every other website is just a really personalized facebook page.

I’ll have to take your word for that. As I said to someone else, if she were on AOL I could totally see that, but it’s more of stretch for me to believe it with Facebook.

and yet 95% of humanity does exactly that

doubtful

While I find it equally stupid as you do, you mustn’t forget that the overwhelming majority of users on the internet aren’t techies like us.

If this was grandma on AOL I would probably agree, but this person is cogent enough to actually file a lawsuit because the place she went to search didn’t serve her the ads she wanted. Hard to believe she didn’t also know at the very least that Google or Bing are options. I wouldn’t expect her to know about DuckDuckGo for instance.

edit: and the “95%” part of that reply was what made it more doubtful than anything. If people didn’t make such ridiculous overreaching claims, they’d be more believable. The exaggerations aren’t necessary or valid.

Fair. Though it still makes me doubt it a little bit. It is still an American woman we’re talking about. Suing is your national pastime, isn’t it?

I guess. What’s the point in having legal rights if you can’t wield them in court for profit?

Hahaha. Don’t worry, we can sue companies or people in my country just fine as well. We just tend not to do it when, say, the hotdog is missing the sauce you asked for. ;)

Hotdog with the wrong sauce is just asking for vigilante justice here.

That honestly explains American litigation culture a lot better than anything I’ve ever read or watched.

As much as most don’t like Facebook, I honestly don’t see why Facebook is at fault here. They’ve got a platform where advertisers come on, say “I want to sell ads to people Ages X-Y , Gender A, in Geography I, J and K”, and they serve ads accordingly. What are they supposed to do? Tell the advertisers “No no no, you need to also pay for ads on these other demographics that you explicitly excluded”? The plaintiff should be suing advertisers, not Facebook, for intentionally not targeting them.

1 more...