> If the ad system stops showing ads for this job to the users who have demonstrated they don’t want to see them, is that gender discrimination?
According to US employment law, yes, actually. That is something called disparate impact (unintentional discrimination), and it is illegal in the same way disparate treatment (intentional discrimination) is.
Remember, we make laws and they are there to make society work/better. So whilst the legal answer is "yes", I presume the real question was "_Is_ this gender discrimination?", as in; let's actually think about it instead of fobbing it off to the current state of the law.
If the law is nonsensical or harmful, it can and should be changed.
Still a yes from me. I see no reason to change the law to prevents people from being discriminated against in employment opportunities, And that was implied in my comment. I was not “fobbing” to the current laws, I was saying, this is illegal and for good reason.
Whether intentional or not, you cannot advertise a job to only certain people based on targeting by a protected characteristic.
You may not like it, but you haven’t proven to me that the law is nonsensical. I’m actually a little skeptical you are able to describe the current law you wish to change - see: Chesterton’s Fence.
> Whether intentional or not, you cannot advertise a job to only certain people based on targeting by a protected characteristic.
To clarify, my question was specifically about the case where you could prove that the ad system could not possibly target based on a protected characteristic (gender, in this example). The only thing the ad system could learn is a user's interest in ads for a job.
An ad system like this will show more ads to the people who are interested in them and less to the people who are not. In the case when there is a genuine difference in job interest along gender lines, the "more interested" and "less interested" groups will just happen to have different gender profiles.
So my question was: In these circumstances, if the system gives more ads for the job to the people who want them and less to the people who do not, is that gender discrimination?
EDITED TO ADD: To further clarify: I think you're arguing that if there are observable differences in job ad rates along gender lines, then it follows that the ad system is, in fact, targeting based on gender. I constructed this example to rule out that possibility: The ad system cannot target -- or take any action -- based on gender. All it knows is which users are interested in ads for a job.
According to US employment law, yes, actually. That is something called disparate impact (unintentional discrimination), and it is illegal in the same way disparate treatment (intentional discrimination) is.