Meta (formerly Facebook) will pay $1 million and implement a major overhaul of its advertising in Israel, in a precedent-setting settlement filed this week in a local labor court. The settlement reveals how the world’s largest social network allowed employers to discriminate against job seekers based on age and gender.
The case began in September 2021, when Yala Lev, a 54-year-old sales and marketing worker, discovered that she had been banned from several wanted ads on Facebook. Her investigation revealed a sophisticated mechanism: Facebook’s campaign management system enabled employers to precisely define criteria for candidates who would be exposed to job ads, including age group, gender, and place of residence.
circumstance. Matan Gutman, who, with the lawyer. Nir Friedman, who filed the class action lawsuit, said the ads were completely invisible to entire groups of job seekers, especially those over 40.
The investigation found that major companies, such as the Israel Electric Corporation, the Bank of Israel, and several technology companies, used the system to focus their job advertisements only on young people. For example, 888 advertised management positions for people between the ages of 25 and 39, and other companies restricted their ads to candidates under 45.
The seriousness of the findings led the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to join the action. The committee stated that the matter is “important to the issue of equal access to employment, and has wide-ranging social and public consequences.”
Under the settlement, Meta will transfer $1 million to the Justice Ministry’s class action fund, and will also implement a series of material changes to its advertising system in Israel. The company will require all advertisers based in Israel to reaffirm their compliance with policies prohibiting the use of Meta products to discriminate. It will also publish guidelines in Hebrew for advertisers in Israel clarifying that “opportunities presented in recruitment advertisements must address the entire audience, including all demographic groups, regardless of certain personal characteristics.” The document will contain detailed instructions on how to publish job advertisements in an equal and non-discriminatory manner, emphasizing the legal obligation to allow equal access to jobs for all potential candidates.
“The settlement is an important development for the value of equality in the labor market in the modern era of social networking,” Gutman and Friedman said. “The arrangements drafted will greatly help in reducing discriminatory recruitment advertising, and in educating employers that publishing recruitment notices that are segmented into a specific target audience, such as ‘men under 35’, is illegal.”
The Israeli case joins similar lawsuits filed against Meta in the United States and Canada. The settlement will take effect after final court approval, and is expected to affect job advertisements on all digital platforms in Israel.
Meta was represented in the proceedings by Adv. Dr. Jill Orion and attorney. Yael Remer of FBC & Co.
Published by Globes, Israel Business News – en.globes.co.il – on December 26, 2024.
© Copyright Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2024.
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