> That's true, but consider this: the fact that it's true is, itself, a confirmation that (a) institutional sexism exists in our programmer culture, and (b) sexism is pervasive. How strange would it sound to say "that male engineer's handsome picture sure looks spammy"? Apparently our stereotypical view of a female engineer is that it's unnatural for them to look so pretty!
Nonsense.
If those ads were for medical services, they'd look like spam.
If those ads were for managerial consulting, they'd look like spam.
If those ads were for educational services, they'd look like spam.
If those ads were for fitness services, they'd look like spam.
Advertisers all over the world learned that generic pictures of pretty women sell product more effectively than generic pictures of pretty men—even when selling to women.
That's why the internet is full of cheap-looking ads with generic pictures of pretty women pasted next to lazy, attention-grabbing text.
Humans are pattern matching machines, and those ads [EDIT: they just removed one of the ads from the post] look just like spam. That's all there is to this story. They make the LinkedIn website look cheap.
> Note that LinkedIn wasn't concerned that they might be spammers. If that were their concern, then LinkedIn wouldn't have offered to reinstate their account in exchange for changing their profile pictures. So the issue is strictly one of physical appearance / stereotypes of female engineers. Hence LinkedIn's concern seems to be that the attractiveness of the photos are either giving an unfair advantage to the profile, or contributing a "noisy" feeling to the results of searches. Yet we wouldn't bat an eye at a similar picture of a handsome male engineer.
LinkedIn wanted the pictures in those spammy ads changed because they don't want their site looking spammy. That's it.
Should companies now fear a western feminist backlash when considering whether to reject advertisements that have generic pictures of pretty women on them? What might be the end result of that be?
Nonsense.
If those ads were for medical services, they'd look like spam.
If those ads were for managerial consulting, they'd look like spam.
If those ads were for educational services, they'd look like spam.
If those ads were for fitness services, they'd look like spam.
Advertisers all over the world learned that generic pictures of pretty women sell product more effectively than generic pictures of pretty men—even when selling to women.
That's why the internet is full of cheap-looking ads with generic pictures of pretty women pasted next to lazy, attention-grabbing text.
Humans are pattern matching machines, and those ads [EDIT: they just removed one of the ads from the post] look just like spam. That's all there is to this story. They make the LinkedIn website look cheap.
> Note that LinkedIn wasn't concerned that they might be spammers. If that were their concern, then LinkedIn wouldn't have offered to reinstate their account in exchange for changing their profile pictures. So the issue is strictly one of physical appearance / stereotypes of female engineers. Hence LinkedIn's concern seems to be that the attractiveness of the photos are either giving an unfair advantage to the profile, or contributing a "noisy" feeling to the results of searches. Yet we wouldn't bat an eye at a similar picture of a handsome male engineer.
LinkedIn wanted the pictures in those spammy ads changed because they don't want their site looking spammy. That's it.
Should companies now fear a western feminist backlash when considering whether to reject advertisements that have generic pictures of pretty women on them? What might be the end result of that be?