Facebook continues to track teens for the purpose of bombarding them with ‘surveillance advertising’ despite the company’s claim that it was stopping the practice, according to a new report.
The report by Global Action Plan and Reset Australia accuses Facebook, which has rebranded itself as Meta, of ‘harvesting children’s personal data to fuel their advertising delivery system.’
The social network is being accused of using AI technology to surveil children’s browsing patterns and sites visited so that it can tailor which ads they are exposed to.
DailyMail.com has reached out to Facebook/Meta seeking comment.
Facebook/Meta pledged this past summer to restrict advertisers’ ability to target users under the age of 18.
The company rebranded itself in the wake of several scandals, including one triggered by a whistleblower who leaked documents indicating that the social network knew its products were harmful to teens.
Facebook, which has rebranded itself as Meta, continues to track teens for the purpose of bombarding them with ‘surveillance advertising’ despite the company’s claim that it was stopping the practice, according to a new report. Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is seen above
The report by Global Action Plan and Reset Australia accuses Facebook, which has rebranded itself as Meta, of ‘harvesting children’s personal data to fuel their advertising delivery system.’ It accused the site of using AI technology to gather information about children's browsing history so as to tailor which ads they see
Global Action Plan and Reset Australia, a coalition of nonprofit organizations that include human rights groups and privacy advocates, accuses Facebook of misleading the public and Congress.
In an open letter to Facebook/Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, members of the nonprofit coalition wrote: ‘We are writing to urge you to immediately end all surveillance advertising to children and adolescents, including the use of artificial intelligence to optimize the delivery of specific ads to the young people most vulnerable to them.’
The letter continues: ‘Replacing “targeting selected by advertisers” with “optimization selected by a machine learning delivery system” does not represent a demonstrable improvement for children, despite Facebook’s claims in July.’
'Facebook is still using the vast amount of data it collects about young people in order to determine which children are most likely to be vulnerable to a given ad,' the letter states.
'This practice is especially concerning, given "optimisation" might mean weight loss ads served to teens with emerging eating disorders or an ad being served when, for instance, a teen's mood suggests they are particularly vulnerable.'
It continued: 'Children are more susceptible to the pressures of marketing, less likely to recognize paid-for content, and less likely to understand how data is used for these purposes than adults.
'Increased commercial pressures on children can lead to materialism, parent-child conflict and life dissatisfaction.
'Ever more personalized, ever more optimized advertising to children has the capacity to amplify these harms.'
In July, the company said that ‘starting in a few weeks, we’ll only allow advertisers to target ads to people under 18 (or older in certain countries) based on their age, gender and location.’
The change would be applied to Facebook, its Messenger service, and the photo-sharing platform Instagram.
In a blog post, Instagram said it was making the change because it agreed with youth advocates that young people might not be equipped to make decisions about targeting.
A Facebook spokesman said there would be no changes to the user data the company collects.
Instagram users under 16 years old will also start to be defaulted into having a private account when they join the platform, the company said, in an effort to stop unwanted contact from adults.
They will still be given the option, however, to switch to a public account and current users can keep their account public.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has sued Facebook, which is now known as Meta, alleging that it broke federal securities law by purposely misleading the public about its algorithms
Facebook's approach to younger users has been in the spotlight after US lawmakers and attorneys general slammed its leaked plans to launch a version of Instagram for children under 13.
Earlier this year, a group of more than 40 state attorneys general wrote to Zuckerberg asking him to ditch the idea.
The company said on Tuesday it was working on an 'Instagram experience for tweens.'
It has said the idea of a youth-focused app is to provide parents greater transparency and controls on what younger children who want to access Instagram are doing.
Several major social media companies have also rolled out versions of their apps for younger audiences, from Facebook's Messenger Kids to Alphabet Inc-owned YouTube Kids.
Proponents argue that children are already on a platform and so a family-friendly version provides a safer environment, but critics say Facebook should not be trying to hook young kids on its services due to risks to their development, mental health and privacy.
Age verification of children is an issue on many social media sites, which prohibit kids under 13 but often fail to identify and remove underage users.
In a separate blog on Tuesday, Facebook's head of youth products, Pavni Diwanji, said it was using artificial intelligence to improve this verification and remove underage accounts.
Instagram also said it was making it harder in several countries for adults who have shown potentially suspicious behavior - such as recently being reported by a young user - to find young people's accounts, either through searching user names or having the accounts suggested to them.
It said it would prevent such adults from seeing comments from young people on others' posts and that the adults would not be able to leave comments on the posts of young people.
Earlier on Tuesday, it was announced that the state of Ohio filed a lawsuit against Facebook/Meta, accusing the company of breaking federal securities law by purposely misleading the public about the negative effects of its social platforms and algorithms that run them.
The lawsuit
