Summary: Amazon and other companies were sued for allegedly discriminating against older workers.
A number of big companies are being sued for discrimination. Three workers and the Communications Workers of America claim the defendants use targetted employment ads on Facebook that exclude the elderly, according to Silicon Beat.
The plaintiffs said that Amazon, T-Mobile, Cox Communications, and other giants use Facebook ads to find employees and that they up the ads so that only the young market can see them. The plaintiffs filed their lawsuit in San Francisco federal court on Wednesday.
“Hundreds of major American employers and employment agencies that, upon information and belief, routinely exclude older workers from receiving their employment and recruiting ads on Facebook, and thus deny older workers job opportunities,” the lawsuit stated.
The lawsuit was filed the same day that the New York Times reported that big companies exclude older Facebook users and certain ethnic groups from seeing ads. They do this by using Facebook’s targeted capabilities.
Facebook responded to the New York Times’ article in a blog post. Facebook’s vice president of ads, Rob Goldman, said that the company’s ads allow recruiters to reach individuals of all ages.
“These individual ads are part of broader-based recruitment efforts designed to reach all ages and all backgrounds,” Goldman said.
However, the plaintiffs believe that companies use Facebook to limit their job seekers who are 38 years-old or younger.
“This pattern or practice of discrimination denies job opportunities to individuals who are searching for and interested in jobs, reduces the number of older workers who apply for jobs with the offending employers and employment agencies, and depresses the number of older workers who are hired,” the complaint said.
Last month, Facebook said they were temporarily disabling the ability for advertisers to target users by their race, according to Reuters.
Facebook was not named as a defendant in this case, but it was listed as a company that uses age to discriminate. The company has denied this allegation.
T-Mobile and Cox declined to comment to Reuters, but Amazon said they were fixing their online ad problem.
“We recently audited our recruiting ads on Facebook and discovered some had targeting that was inconsistent with our approach of searching for any candidate over the age of 18,” Amazon said to Reuters.
Peter Romer-Friedman, a lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said that they plan to add more defendants and are seeking class-action status.
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