The key point of the article hinges on one particular statement: "These gender differences cannot be explained away by gender differences in qualifications or a lack of qualifications,"
How the heck is Facebook supposed to know about someones qualifications?
Facebook _obviously_ have a set of standard data points they use for ad targeting, such as location, gender, age-span and so on together with dynamically updated data who have interacted with the ad.
Just because the outcome is not what the journalist want doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong or discriminatory.
Sure, it could of course be that Facebook algorithm is explicitly discriminatory, but it's more likely an algorithm such as this one is actually fairly neutral (compared with pre-trained data that can have built-in bias, for example photographs of people with mostly white skin - ad targeting is probably keyword based, and should be trained on actual data from what actual people click on).
Is it discriminatory? I don't think so. Is it "filter-bubble-reinforcing"? Yes, that's more likely. As more men initially click an ad, it will be shown to more men. And vice versa.
The key point of the article hinges on one particular statement: "These gender differences cannot be explained away by gender differences in qualifications or a lack of qualifications,"
How the heck is Facebook supposed to know about someones qualifications?
Facebook _obviously_ have a set of standard data points they use for ad targeting, such as location, gender, age-span and so on together with dynamically updated data who have interacted with the ad.
Just because the outcome is not what the journalist want doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong or discriminatory.
Sure, it could of course be that Facebook algorithm is explicitly discriminatory, but it's more likely an algorithm such as this one is actually fairly neutral (compared with pre-trained data that can have built-in bias, for example photographs of people with mostly white skin - ad targeting is probably keyword based, and should be trained on actual data from what actual people click on).
Is it discriminatory? I don't think so. Is it "filter-bubble-reinforcing"? Yes, that's more likely. As more men initially click an ad, it will be shown to more men. And vice versa.