https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/eu-european-human-ri...
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/28/tech/facebook-gender-discrimination-e...
... The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights said in a February 18 decision that Facebook’s algorithm reinforced gender stereotypes by mainly showing “typically female professions” to female Facebook users in the Netherlands and that Meta, the social platform’s owner, should have monitored and adjusted its algorithm to prevent that.
... international non-profit Global Witness [...] investigated Facebook’s job ads and found that ads in the Netherlands and five other countries often targeted users based on historical gender stereotypes.
... The Netherlands Institute for Human Rights said in its February ruling that Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd., which manages Facebook ads in Europe, failed to demonstrate that its advertising algorithm does not engage in prohibited gender discrimination. The Dutch body said Facebook must revise its advertising algorithm to prevent further discrimination.
... Meta spokesperson Ashley Settle previously told CNN that the company applies “targeting restrictions to advertisers when setting up campaigns for employment, as well as housing and credit ads.” Those audience targeting restrictions are in place in the United States, Canada and more than 40 European countries and territories, including France and the Netherlands, according to Meta.
“We do not allow advertisers to target these ads based on gender,” Settle said in a 2023 statement. “We continue to work with stakeholders and experts across academia, human rights groups and other disciplines on the best ways to study and address algorithmic fairness.” Meta did not respond to questions from CNN at the time about how the algorithm that runs its ad system is trained. In a 2020 blog post about its ad delivery system, Facebook said ads are shown to users based on a variety of factors, including “behavior on and off” the platform.
... Rosie Sharpe, Senior Campaigner on Digital Threats at Global Witness, said the ruling “marks an important step towards holding Big Tech accountable for how they design their services and the discriminatory impact their algorithms can have on people.”
“We hope this ruling can be used as a springboard for further action, in Europe and beyond,” she added.
