Facebook is still harvesting children\u2019s personal data and targeting teens with \u201csurveillance advertising\u201d despite pledging to end the practice earlier this year, according to new research.<\/p>\n
In July, Facebook announced that it would only allow advertisers to target ads to people under 18 based on their age, gender and location. In September, the firm\u2019s global head of safety Antigone Davis reaffirmed this when testifying in front of the US Senate.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have very limited advertising to young people,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can only actually now target a young person based on their gender, age, or location.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new revelations suggest Facebook no longer allows advertisers to directly target children but instead uses data from their online behaviour to power an AI \u201cDelivery System\u201d to optimise targeted ads to them.<\/p>\n
\u201cReplacing \u2018targeting selected by advertisers\u2019 with \u2018optimisation selected by a machine learning delivery system\u2019 does not represent a demonstrable improvement for children, despite Facebook\u2019s claims in July,\u201d an international coalition of civil liberties and child protection organisations wrote in an open letter to Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cFacebook 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
The open letter stated that the practice was especially concerning as the optimised targeting may include things like weight loss ads served to teens with emerging eating disorders.<\/p>\n
\u201cFar from changing their systems to improve things for children, Facebook has yet again put their interests first, unleashed their algorithms and may have actually made things worse for children,\u201d said Dr Rys Farthing, director of children\u2019s policy at digital threat organisation Reset Australia, who led the research. \u201cThey seem unable to act in children\u2019s best interests.\u201d<\/p>\n
Oliver Hayes, policy and campaigns lead at Global Action Plan, added: \u201cIt is deeply cynical to trumpet the end of targeted ads to kids, all the while harvesting teens\u2019 data to fuel powerful \u2018optimised\u2019 ads delivered by AI.<\/p>\n
\u201cSurveillance ads to kids are invasive, manipulative, and unpopular. Clearly, Facebook knew as much when it announced its July changes. But their attempt to score a PR win while continuing to spy on kids for profit has now been called out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Facebook did not respond to a request for comment from The Independent and is yet to publicly comment on the allegations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Facebook is still harvesting children\u2019s personal data and targeting teens with \u201csurveillance advertising\u201d despite pledging to end the practice earlier this year, according to new research. In July, Facebook announced that it would only allow advertisers to target ads to people under 18 based on their age, gender and location. In September, the firm\u2019s global […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227644,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-227639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"\n