This is so f**ked up!!
We all know as amazing as social media can be, it has its major downsides, especially for young adults who are already really vulnerable. And this just makes it so much worse!! A former Facebook employee is spilling all the tea on the alleged problematic behavior at the company, now called Meta, and how it directly impacts young teenagers! Ugh!
Sarah Wynn-Williams worked at the company from 2011 to 2017, becoming the public policy director. In her new book, Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism out in March, she revealed a harrowing tactic used on the platform to push beauty ads to teens!
Related: Influencer Called ‘Selfish Mom’ After Going On Vacation WITHOUT Kids!
According to the author, as early as 2017, Meta started testing out ways to target ads to 13 to 17-year-olds on both Facebook and Instagram. They did this using a method known as surveillance capitalism — AKA the way in which someone’s personal data is used for profit thanks to targeted ads.
You know how it feels like your phone is stalking you because you’ll think of a product and suddenly see promo for it? That’s this. Simply put, social media platforms analyze four main metrics: your personal data (gender, age, etc.), interests, off-app behavior, and your “psychographics” (or general trends about you learned over time).
They’re tracking everything and using it to their advantage — allegedly including what you delete! In a downright disturbing addition to all this data tracking is the allegation that Facebook has also been detecting when young girls delete selfies “so it can serve a beauty ad to them at that moment,” according to Wynn-Williams.
OMG!
The author commented:
“To me, this type of surveillance and monetization of young teens’ sense of worthlessness feels like a concrete step toward the dystopian future Facebook’s critics had long warned of.”
She also claims they’d target young mothers based on their emotional state and tracked other emotional indexes, such as “Hispanic and African American Feeling Fantastic Over-index.”
There was actually a report by The Australian out in 2017 that accused the company of creating a pitch deck for advertisers in which they claimed they could exploit “moments of psychological vulnerability” in its users by targeting terms like “worthless,” “insecure,” “stressed,” “defeated,” “anxious,” “stupid,” “useless,” and “like a failure.” WTF. Naturally, Facebook hit back at the claims at the time, but Sarah’s book seems to be confirming it!
She recalled how when the news first broke about this back in the day, the company execs weren’t too concerned. They put out a simple statement, saying:
“We take this very seriously and are taking every effort to remedy the situation.”
But (sadly) as to be expected, a junior researcher took the blame for it and was fired, “even though that poor researcher was most likely just doing what her bosses wanted… another nameless young woman who was treated as cannon fodder.” And the ad-targeting continued! Sarah claimed the deputy chief privacy officer at the time said “not only does Facebook offer this type of customized behavioral targeting,” but that “there’s a product team working on a tool that would allow advertisers to do this themselves, without Facebook’s help.” Jeez.
The New Zealand lawyer was even scolded as she tried to craft PR statements to address the controversy. Her bosses apparently saw nothing wrong with what they were doing, one top advertising executive allegedly told her:
“This is the business, Sarah. We’re proud of this. We shout this from the rooftops. This is what puts money in all our pockets. And these statements make it look like it’s something nefarious.”
Awful! It would seem they realize it’s not the most ethical thing now because Meta took legal action against its former employee ahead of the launch of her book — resulting in her getting barred from promoting it! Seems they’re trying to silence this! Yeesh.
When Futurism reached out to discuss the book over the weekend, a Meta spokesperson simply directed the outlet to a 2017 blog post the company released about the initial reporting, stating:
“The premise of the article is misleading. Facebook does not offer tools to target people based on their emotional state. The analysis done by an Australian researcher was intended to help marketers understand how people express themselves on Facebook. It was never used to target ads and was based on data that was anonymous and aggregated.”
Hmm. Kinda crazy they couldn’t even come up with a new statement all these years later, though. So terrible to think this kind of manipulative and harmful stuff could be going on just for money!
Thoughts?? Sound OFF!
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