Mark Zuckerberg's Meta has landed itself in hot water yet again after a 37-year-old man from London alleged that the social media company was targeting him with pictures of girls returning to school—in its ads for Threads.
He described the back-to-school pictures of the schoolgirls—some said to be as young as 13, and dressed in short skirts, with either bare legs or stockings—as “deliberately provocative and ultimately exploitative of the children and families involved”, as per a Guardian report.
The man—himself a father—who saw the ads on his Instagram feed, also claimed that it had only girls in school uniforms, and not boys, which he felt was “an aspect of sexualisation”. He added that he had not posted or liked any such images before the ads.
What parents said
Parents of the children were furious after they realised that the pictures of their children returning to school (after vacations) were taken from their public Instagram accounts.
“Not for any money in the world would I let them use a girl dressed in a school uniform to get people on to Threads," the mother of a 15-year-old said.
The report noted that the woman's public Instagram handle had 267 followers, with most posts getting modest reach on social media, except for the back-to-school post, which attracted nearly 7,000 views, of which 90 per cent were from non-followers.
“When I found out an image of her has been exploited in what felt like a sexualised way by a massive company like that to market their product it left me feeling quite disgusted,” said the father of a 13-year-old.
Meta's reasoning
Meta, however, defended itself, saying that the public back-to-school posts were treated as "recommendation tools" by its algorithms, which was in line with their policies.
When MetaAI once put user privacy at risk
This follows a similar controversy earlier this year, when MetaAI allowed Google to index people's private chats with it.
Although people had checked a box permitting the chats to be shared publicly, it is likely that they did not understand the impact of their actions.
Conversations that went public involved a wide range of topics, with many involving private matters and easily identifiable details like phone numbers and Instagram handles.
Following media coverage and backlash, Meta is said to have added a privacy warning that appears before users share the chats.
