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

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.

Comments

ha ha, jokes on them

[Anonymous Coward]

any teens using facebook are worthless

Re:its called optimization

[chihowa]

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.