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Privacy Facebook Social Networks The Courts

Facebook Lets Advertisers Target Insecure Teens, Says Report (cnet.com) 118

Posted by msmash from the stranger-things dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Leaked documents from Facebook's team in Australia allegedly show the social giant's ability to help advertisers target teens who feel "worthless." The documents, first revealed by The Australian, say Facebook can spot when teens "need a confidence boost." The documents reportedly get even more specific, saying Facebook's algorithm can pinpoint when teens feel "useless," "stressed," "failure," "silly," "stupid," "worthless" and "defeated." Using Facebook's tools as well as image recognition, advertisers would be able to find teens in some of their lowest moments -- and then target ads to them. The leaked documents also detailed how advertisers could use Facebook's algorithms to find teens who were interested in "working out and losing weight" and promote health products, according to The Australian. Facebook's team in Australia was reportedly looking to capitalize on 6.4 million teens who use the social network in their region.
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Facebook Lets Advertisers Target Insecure Teens, Says Report More

Facebook Lets Advertisers Target Insecure Teens, Says Report

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  • ha ha, jokes on them (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    any teens using facebook are worthless
    • There are 2 types of teens. Those that think their worthless, and those that think their entitled, and worthless. Guess which one has the money to spend with?

    • Facebook Lets Advertisers Target Insecure Teens, Says Report

      It's the Blue Whale 50 steps program to security

  • LOL (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Tech site slashdot rendered in 1990's style due to "the cloud" hosting service using a test certificate. Oh the irony:

    a.fsdn.com uses an invalid security certificate.

    The certificate is only valid for *.test.edgekey.net

  • Lock them in jail and throw away the key.

  • Targeted Advertising Epidemic (Score:3)

    by pr0fessor ( 1940368 ) on Monday May 01, 2017 @02:29PM (#54336017)

    The next headline will be "Target Advertising Causes Teen Bulimia Epidemic".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      The next headline will be "Target Advertising Causes Teen Bulimia Epidemic".

      Or worse, "Ill-timed handgun advertising causes 1500% increase in school shootings."

      It isn't even hard to think of ways that this could be abused. Actually, it's rather hard to think of any use of this that isn't abuse, other than perhaps anti-bullying/anti-depression/suicide hotline PSAs. Pretty much any commercial use of that particular option falls so far on the evil side of the line that I can't imagine what sort of engineers

      • The thing about targeted advertising is it's persistence, if you buy or shop for something online then you will start seeing ads for it on every site you visit unless you have an ad blocker. ads for antidepressants and suicide hotlines popping up all over may not have the desired effect

  • Disable broadcast of your teen's SSID. Removing wifi access to your teen altogether provides even stronger security.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Great idea! And then do other things to make them entirely unfit for life, like no sex-ed, give some utterly stupid religious beliefs, limit their education in general, etc.

      • Actually, limiting their access to unrestricted (and often hostile) media is healthy.
        Restricting their access to critical thought and sex-ed leads to lifelong problems.

        As to TFA,
        I find it both highly interesting and highly disturbing that they are targeting particularly vulnerable minors. I think the disturbing part is self explanatory, but what if the same algos were made available for free to NIH (in the US, not sure what the equivalent in AU is) and those ad slots were filled with positive messages, sto

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Well, yes, I do agree to that. I do not think it is really doable though.

        • Actually, limiting their access to unrestricted (and often hostile) media is healthy.
          Restricting their access to critical thought and sex-ed leads to lifelong problems.

          So, deciding for them what media they should access (thus limiting their need for critical thought) is good, but denying them critical thought is bad?

          • To some extent, yes.
            Kids' minds are still developing, their capacity to handle some of the unfiltered bullshit on the internet is limited by hormones, experience, etc.
            The "walled garden" approach to life is not a bad thing, as long as the walls are allowed to expand reasonably and not forever remain a tiny cell (which would stunt growth). It's the mental information processing equivalent of keeping them in the shallow side of the pool while learning to swim when you're not there with them, going into the d

            • Fellow parent here and I agree. Another good example is gaming. I love counter-strike. I have for almost half of my life, to be honest, but I'm not letting my son play it at this point. Why? Not because there are guns and violence. It's because of the toxicity and language of the other kids that are playing. He's asked me many times if he can play and, just like League of Legends I say no. These communities, just like many social networks, are simply not conducive to healthy psychological development.

    • By the time they are teens they should be making most of their own decisions, so that when they are adults they are capable of managing their own lives. When my daughter was 8, I used parental controls. When she was 13, I turned it off. She was ready to see reality unfiltered. Sure, she was upset the first time she saw a video of a cat being tortured, but she also learned that there are some very bad people out there.

  • so facebook helps its consumers with optimizing their usage of its product... why is this an issue?

    • Because somebody probably envisioned identifying teens sliding toward depression and advertising things at them like study groups, social activities, or other sorts of stuff surmised to help prevent teen suicide and whatnot; and a bunch of other people probably didn't think much of it, thus opening the door to allow marketers to target teens who are likely to do certain things on an impulse.

      People in vulnerable emotional states are easily-influenced. Identifying these states is good; using them to manip

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Zocalo ( 252965 )

        thus opening the door to allow marketers to target teens who are likely to do certain things on an impulse.

        Perhaps not a demographic Gillette ought to be targetting then?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Because targeting the weak is something only the truly immoral do? That you even have to ask is showing a significant problem on your side.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by zlives ( 2009072 )

        FB the corporation and its customer corporations are not dealing with moral issues of their products, purely trying to maximize the profit motive.

        as much as I personally may despise FB and thus refuse to become its product, the Product is willingly and knowingly presenting itself to slaughter.

           

        • Re:its called optimization (Score:4, Insightful)

          by chihowa ( 366380 ) on Monday May 01, 2017 @06:01PM (#54337471)

          This isn't the result of some abstract optimizing algorithm (yet). A person, or several people, in various marketing departments specifically decided to target insecure minors in order to increase their companies' profits (ostensibly because they are more easily manipulated).

          You can claim it's incorrect to attribute motives and morality to corporations and be technically correct (the best kind of correct), but the individual decision makers in the companies don't get off the hook so easily.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by zlives ( 2009072 )

            i guess they could feel a moral conflict and thus depression and then perhaps get targeted by their version of therapy providers in similar vein.
            chance are though no one looks back until they have to, or are forced to, until that time its fun with all the cash hey are pocketing :)

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            And that is just the point. For the foreseeable future it will always be humans that make such decisions. And they can and must be held to moral standards.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          Avoiding thought of ethics doesn't absolve you of responsibility. Why not rob a liquor store while avoiding all thoughts of law, morals, or ethics and see what a judge thinks of that?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Indeed. As soon as you are faced with a decision that has ethics aspects, you are making a choice that involves ethics, even if you refuse to acknowledge that aspect. And as soon as you react to this decision in any way that has an impact on others, you have an ethical responsibility for the outcome.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      Because pimping children is bad!

  • Sounds good (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    That way counseling and help groups like boystown hotline can be exposed to the right group of people.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Thud457 ( 234763 )
      pregnant teens -> right to life misinformation services
      gay teens -> Mike Pence's school for wayward boys
      &etc...

      no, I see no possible problem there...

  • Or do they have a measure of just how insecure or damaged a person is? (That probably requires many axis)

    They probably use celebrities as canonical examples;

    How Damaged on a scale of 0 to 1.0 Lindsay Lohans
    How much drugs abused on a scale of 0 to 1.0 Keith Richards (anything over 0.3 on that scale would kill the average human)
    etc... :-)

    Considerable amusement awaits when defining other measures :-)

  • I mean, these people are in the advertising business, it does not get much more exploitative than that. The only surprise (maybe) is that they were stupid enough to get caught.

  • ? I thought it was clear that this is how Facebook makes money. Too late to stop it now.
  • "Sturdy Rope, guaranteed to not break!" advertised to teens that are feeling depressed, along with 'low fat yogurt' ads just in case they decide NOT to kill themselves.

  • Worst thing you can say (Score:5, Interesting)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Monday May 01, 2017 @03:05PM (#54336271) Homepage Journal
    "you can do anything and be anything in life". No you can't. It is the worst lie to tell a child.
    • Getting them to want to do something is the hard part.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )
      You absolutely can try to be anything in life. To succeed and "be" is a different thing. You can try, however, and should aspire to whatever you think you want to be. To get a child to aspire to things is the thing. If you tell them they will get it for nothing, well, then you've failed as a parent.

    • "you can almost do anything and be anything in life".

      FTFY. Now it's not a lie. Also tell them to stop mowing down my lawn. Just because they can doesn't mean they should.

  • Which is all you need to know to know that your children should not be anywhere near it!

  • Can it tell which ones are feeling horny? Just asking.

  • Predatory (Score:3)

    by slashrio ( 2584709 ) on Monday May 01, 2017 @03:55PM (#54336681)
    That's what I call predatory advertising.
    I'm glad I'm not part of that stupid facebook abuse.

  • ...when you help foster critical thinking and mature attitudes in teens you won't need to care what specific greedy corporation or social spying network came up with.

    It's up to parents to counteract this crap. Women have consumed "fashion" magazines for decades and it has mostly caused them to doubt their own worth, looks etc. Men think they are immune but these days they are sculpting their eyebrows and trying to get a sixpack.

    Why? because advertisers know that a chimp without a stick and a can wants t

  • I love these articles like this is something new. Hello? Anyone remember the 80's and the advertising around sugary breakfast cereals? Cartoon characters were the main vehicle there. Buzz Bee Cheerios, Toucan Sam, Diggum the Frog. Oh and don't forget the hero of them all busting down that school brick wall to get kids to drink sugar water, KOOLAID man!

    American advertising is one of the most disgusting things on the planet. Someone who has serious brand marketing tell these people. Brands create relat

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zifn4b ( 1040588 )
      And by the way, this whole shaming people for not buying the right brand of this and that, it's a form of gas-lighting. Fuck those people.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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