Skip to Content
Silicon Valley

Facebook is being sued for hiding job ads from women

September 18, 2018

The American Civil Liberties Union is suing Facebook, claiming it illegally runs ads that are shown only to men.

The news: The lawsuit, which is being filed on behalf of three women, says Facebook let 10 employers, including a police department, to run advertisements excluding women and nonbinary users. It has been filed with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the body responsible for enforcing federal discrimination laws.

Facebook’s response: In an e-mailed statement, Facebook said: “There is no place for discrimination on Facebook; it’s strictly prohibited in our policies, and over the past year, we’ve strengthened our systems to further protect against misuse.” The spokesperson added that Facebook is “reviewing the complaint and look forward to defending our practices.”

Broken promises? This is far from the first time Facebook has got in trouble for enabling illegal discrimination on the grounds of age and race by allowing advertisers to exclude certain groups. It publicly committed to ending the practice across the US in July 2018.

Keep Reading

Most Popular

Large language models can do jaw-dropping things. But nobody knows exactly why.

And that's a problem. Figuring it out is one of the biggest scientific puzzles of our time and a crucial step towards controlling more powerful future models.

OpenAI teases an amazing new generative video model called Sora

The firm is sharing Sora with a small group of safety testers but the rest of us will have to wait to learn more.

Google’s Gemini is now in everything. Here’s how you can try it out.

Gmail, Docs, and more will now come with Gemini baked in. But Europeans will have to wait before they can download the app.

This baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language

A neural network trained on the experiences of a single young child managed to learn one of the core components of language: how to match words to the objects they represent.

Stay connected

Illustration by Rose Wong

Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review

Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.

Thank you for submitting your email!

Explore more newsletters

It looks like something went wrong.

We’re having trouble saving your preferences. Try refreshing this page and updating them one more time. If you continue to get this message, reach out to us at customer-service@technologyreview.com with a list of newsletters you’d like to receive.