The case centers around Samantha Liapes, a 48-year-old woman who turned to Facebook to find an insurance provider.
I’m sorry, whatnow?
So now if I search for car insurance and Facebook shows me ads for a buttplug from Kickstarter, I can sue them? Because we’re all going to very rich, if so.
That’s how I shop. I scroll through loads of random thoughts and pictures by friends and family and people I barely know until someone tries to sell me insurance. What’s the problem exactly?
Someone is angry because they’re not getting ads on Facebook?
That’s a switch.
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
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.
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.
I have literally known people who think this.
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.
The customer is the company buying the ads, there’s never been any pretense that ads are there to serve the person viewing them.
You could sue for discrimination if you went to buy an ad slot, and the availability or price of those slots was based on your demographics as an advertiser. That’s not what happened here.
You buy ads with the target demographic criteria. That’s often people with jobs, newlyweds etc.
It’s not an “equal right” to be targeted by the ads.
I find this very unconvincing. Ads don’t offer a service. They’re not like a search engine or the likes. So why should ads have to target all groups equally?
So, is it actual discrimination, or is it just that their data Facebook has shows that other ads are better suited to them, statistically, in terms of profit? I’m sure all sorts of patterns show up in the quantity of data they have, and algorithms show ads based on these patterns. It’s possible that gender is a factor, but it seems just as likely that there are other patterns (perhaps some common to a given gender) that factor into this result.
Edit: To be clear, I did not read the article, because I don’t actually care that much. I just find statistics and patterns interesting. Having worked in insurance in the past, I was always curious about which exact information factored into premiums, and in what way. I know everything from marital status, to job, education, location, age, credit score, and much more, factored into decisions, and not always in ways you may expect – all based on statistics.
I guess in the technical sense of the term any targeting of advertising is discrimination.
