Facebook Probably Lied About Targeting Teens With Ads

Facebook Probably Lied About Targeting Teens With Ads

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Facebook’s new policy allows advertisers only to collect information about age, gender, and location of teens, but its systems are apparently exempt.

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Facebook Probably Lied About Targeting Teens With Ads

New research has revealed that Facebook is still collecting a huge amount of information on young users via its in-house systems for ad-targeting, months after it limited the scope of data collection by third parties for the same purpose in the name of child safety. To recall, Facebook announced back in July that advertisers will only be able to use age, gender, and location of users under the age of 18 years in order to show them targeted ads.

The rules were supposed to be implemented across all social platforms it owns viz. Facebook, Instagram, and Messengers. Following the policy change, advertisers were blocked from collecting data across interests or activities such as likes and purchasing across other apps and websites. Back then, the company — which now goes by the name Meta — claimed that young users are not well equipped to make decisions regarding what ads they see and how to limit the ad-targeting on their own.

Well, it appears that those rules applied only for advertisers, and not Facebook itself. As per collaborative research conducted by Fairplay, Reset Australia, and Global Action Plan, the company’s own advertising mechanism called ‘Delivery System’ collected behavioral data from three test accounts belonging to users under the age of 16 years. The Delivery System algorithms are powered by machine learning with predictive capabilities for eerily effective ad-targeting. It is not the first time that Facebook has been caught involved in deceptive behavior, as the company was fined $5 billion in a privacy case by the US FTC in 2019. Just a few weeks ago, leaked internal research revealed that the company refused to take a proactive approach against COVID-19 misinformation despite making tall claims about doing otherwise — all because doing so would hurt traffic.

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.@Meta said advertisers could no longer target teens based on their interests. But it’s still harvesting children’s personal data to fuel their #surveillanceadvertising delivery system. Letter✍️ ➡️ https://t.co/J0aFH3ZkId Report 📝 ➡️ https://t.co/NWCKL63xTw pic.twitter.com/DuYJ2BImcG

Another Facebook Con With Serious Privacy Concerns

As per the latest research, Facebook was able to collect information such as what buttons users click, the products they add to shopping carts, and the terms they search across different websites. Facebook’s own data collection dashboard revealed the data collected from webpages across other tabs using an ad-related piece of code called Facebook Pixel. It is unclear exactly how the data collected will be used, but the research notes that “there is no reason to store this sort of conversion data, except to fuel the ad delivery system.” Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen also raised concern that one can’t be sure whether Facebook has stopped delivering personalized ads to teenagers, especially on a platform like Instagram where user interests are strongly reflective of their shopping preferences.

These personalized ads can be anything such as pushing sales pitches for weight loss treatments to teens suffering from eating disorders, which is harmful to those struggling with body positivity issues on social media platforms. Facebook’s own leaked internal research has revealed that the company knew Instagram was a toxic landscape for vulnerable teens, but the company prioritized profits over user safety. The key objection raised here is whether limiting the breathing space for advertisers while continuing to collect teenager data itself is any better. An international coalition of 47 organizations campaigning for privacy, public health, and child development have written a letter to CEO Mark Zuckerberg asking him to end data extraction for accounts belonging to teenagers and fully disclose how all that information is used by its advertising system.

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Link Source : https://screenrant.com/facebook-ad-targeting-deception/

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