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Facebook advertisers target children interested in smoking, alcohol, weight loss
- gotoeleven 5y agoTargeting the cool kids eh.
- Synaesthesia 5y agoThey only targeted young children that were already heavy drinkers.
- isoprophlex 5y agoThat's so depressing: "Young children that were already heavy drinkers"...
- Synaesthesia 5y agoIt's a joke from the Simpsons ha
- Tade0 5y agoIt's funny until you meet such people. Actual conversation that went on in my room at a summer camp two decades ago: -At what age did you try vodka for the first time? -Ten. -Yes, ten appears to be a good age to have this experience. A preteen alcoholic is a sad sight, believe me.
- Mauricebranagh 5y agoThere is a difference between trying Alcohol and being an actual acholic. Remember in all of Europe Kids will often have some drinks with meals by then I can certainly remember having a small glass of Cider with Sunday lunch at that age.
- Tade0 5y agoGrowing up in eastern Europe I can only say that I find this almost cute in comparison.
- throwaway122378 5y agoSure give big tech your health data too. Nothing will go wrong
- klondike_ 5y agoRemember when Facebook targeted housing ads based on race (against federal law)? Remember when Facebook conducted an experiment to manipulate teenagers' emotions? Remember when Facebook paid users a paltry sum to install a malicious spying VPN? And of course, the recent leak of millions of people's personal data is just the icing on the cake. This isn't even the full list of scandals Facebook has had in recent years. One after another, scandal after scandal comes out and nobody is punished and their stock price continues to soar. Facebook is too big to fail. They're part of our digital infrastructure now and need to be regulated as such. "They 'trust me'. Dumb Fucks"
- seattle_spring 5y agoRemember when every other article on HN wasn't just a repetitive complaint about Facebook?
- isoprophlex 5y agoJust because it's cliche doesn't make it any less true
- wyclif 5y agoThere probably wouldn't be repetitive complaints if Facebook had to stop their scummy business practices. Zuck is essentially Blofeld in a hoodie.
- skinkestek 5y agoI don't know if you remember but until a decade ago we did the same with Microsoft. Everyone, including Microsofts shareholders have reason to be thankful to us today. (Although I should say I have problems turning my pitchfork and torch towards MS again if they stop behaving.)
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago> Everyone, including Microsofts shareholders have reason to be thankful to us today. The open source community turning pitchforks on Microsoft of the 1990's and the subsequent anti-trust case was one of the worst things that ever happened to computing. Here are the results: 1) Instead of Microsoft's preferred model of personal computer first computing, we ended up with cloud first computing with all the resultant loss of privacy and control 2) Changed the tech sector from where the biggest companies sold software or hardware to end users to one where the biggest companies give away software/services to users so they can monetize them with advertising 3) Convinced all the tech companies that they desperately needed to spend money lobbying Washington in order to preserve their business. I would argue that the average computer (which was likely a PC) user of the 1990's had a lot more privacy and control over their computing than the average computer(which is likely a phone) does now.
- adjkant 5y agoDupeish of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26964249 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26964249
- bryan_w 5y agoOh look, the Guardian shitposting another 15 minutes of FB hate article. I wonder if Facebook is reporting financial numbers soon or something....
- skinkestek 5y agoYou make it sound like a problem that the Guardian is shining a light on some Facebooks unethical business practices? Or am I missing something?
- senectus1 5y agoDont make me pick just one to loathe...
- thisiswater 5y agoThe content of the article is that researchers managed to get ads approved which targeted teens with cocktail recipes and gambling sites. They didn't actually run the ads due to ethical concerns Seeing as what ads can be targeted at children is regulated in Australia, and the public health problems that Australia is trying to solve around drinking and gambling, doesn't that seem like a problem?
- Mauricebranagh 5y agoOh this is Australia it all starts to fall in place probably aligned with Murdoch's attack on tech.
- RileyJames 5y agoHere is a link to the actual report which the article is discussing: https://au.reset.tech/uploads/resettechaustralia_profiling-children-for-advertising-1.pdf https://au.reset.tech/uploads/resettechaustralia_profiling-c... In the report it states the ads were not run. I’m pretty anti-Facebook anything, but this feels like an attack aimed to generate anti-Facebook headlines off the back of their flawed methodology. I find the idea that any company is going to ‘exploit’ the capability to purchase advertising in $5 batches to target 13 - 17 olds with products such as cigarettes, vapes and gambling a little far fetched. Particularly for any company licences to sell said products. Maybe middlemen / affiliates, but even then the cost associated with creating facebook advertising accounts for such small budgets doesn’t seem cost effective. It seems like their methodology has been deliberately chosen ($5, non-branded, trademarkless adverts) to avoid automated filters by flying low. If they did run, they’d likely to be flagged by human users, escalated for moderation and removed. It comes off very calculated.
- michaelmrose 5y agoAdvertising is virtually always manipulation. Logically if you want to be ethical you just won't let them target minors at all or you will be incredibly circumspect in whose human reviewed ads are run.
- helsinkiandrew 5y agoI've always assumed there is some kind of human moderation in the review process to stop things like this happening, after that they are approved and can be shown on websites as soon as the advertiser wants. Relying on viewers to flag (presumably teenagers interested in smoking or gambling) doesn't sound like a good idea. This does just sound like the interests ("gambling", "cigarettes & vaping") should have age appropriate flags so they can't be combined with the specific age groups.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 5y agoI can post “I’m selling vapes to 13-17 year olds, $10 a pop!” almost anywhere on the internet. I won’t get banned for it until someone brings attention to it. I can upload ads like this anywhere that allows users to upload ads. Will the news write a headline like this about it if I do it anywhere other than Facebook? This is a complete non-story. The appropriate forum for it is a bug report to Facebook, not international news. It should make you skeptical about other news about Facebook, because it indicates the media does not have a basic “is this bullshit” filter for stories they publish about Facebook. If this was actual commercial activity, with real vape vendors selling vapes to children, and Facebook kept it up after finding out about it, that would be a story.
- trainsplanes 5y agoPeople do report these things to facebook. They might maybe possibly kind of sometimes take it down, or they might not. But one or two small news stories come out and they apologize and say there's nothing that can be done, then a big story drops and they instantly ban everyone who sold vapes to kids, filter out new ones, and the problem vanishes for a few weeks until people forget.
- fshbbdssbbgdd 5y agoIf this is a real problem, why does the news story only mention a fake example of it?
- cerved 5y agowhat's the point, they're not on Facebook
- pentae 5y agoSo what about when its a charity or government funded anti smoking program thats trying to target them? I guess now with the bad PR from this they won't be able to. Great work guys
- helsinkiandrew 5y agoGreat point, this is what the moderation step should be for - to allow/disallow based on the content.
- hammer_mt 5y agoThis is clickbait - facebook allows you to target people by age, facebook also allows you to target people by interests. They combined these two targeting options but didn't actually run the ads - if they did try they'd see that facebook's ad approval process would take the ads down. Repeated violations would get your account banned, and any account that uses the same credit card.
- anon98356 5y agoFrom the article: "The organisation then tested it out by getting a number of ads mentioning winning prizes, or cocktails, or asking teens if they were “summer ready” approved for advertising to those targeted demographics." So it sounds like they could go further than just identify who the target audience based on under 18s who are interested in alcohol.