The Quebec Court of Appeal has approved a class-action lawsuit launched on behalf of Facebook users who claim they were discriminated against because the social media giant allowed advertisers to target job and housing ads based on factors like age, gender or race.
An application to launch the class-action suit — one that had been in the works for a while — was filed days after a CBC News investigation revealed that nearly 100 employers — including government departments — posted microtargeted job ads on Facebook that experts said could violate Canadian human rights law. The lawsuit cites a number of the examples documented by CBC News of microtargeted job ads that older workers would not have seen in their Facebook feeds.
Under federal and provincial human rights law, employers aren’t allowed to restrict who sees job ads based on age, gender, race or religion, unless the restriction is a bona fide occupational requirement or is part of a specific initiative like a student summer job program.
I do hike on Mt. Baldy a lot in CA, and am in several hiking groups where we talk about Mt. Baldy a lot. It would be hilarious if the algorithm somehow picked that up.
I wholeheartedly agree with this. The action of liking, replying sharing and creating becomes, for many, more important than the content itself, at times. I don’t feel immune to this.
This feels like one of those No Shit research papers. Like, fine, people have to do the work. But the core premise of social media is little brain chemical injections from hitting like or share.
it’s funny, outside of sending a tweet to a friend through imessage, i dont think i’ve ever hit share, retweet, or even like on a single social media post outside of maybe photos of real life friends.
it’s also one of the reasons i think that the captcha type “do you really want to share this?” pop-ups are so important in fighting misinformation. just making it a tiny bit harder is significant… but also probably crushes engagement which is what the platforms want.
s.
