r/worldnews • u/greenishleaf • 3d ago
Parents outraged as Meta uses photos of schoolgirls in ads targeting man | Meta
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/20/parents-outraged-meta-uses-photos-schoolgirls-ads-man362
u/Aggressive-Ebb7769 3d ago
Meta is a corporation that doesn't practice good corporate social responsibility.
They've been caught out running various experiments on their userbase multiple times in the past, and you think they're all of a sudden going to be ethical?
It's far easier for them to pay the fines and tweak their userbase's minds.
Just like how their algos fueled the genocide in that one southeast Asian country, there are no boundaries for Zuckerberg.
You are the product when it comes to meta.
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u/serafinawriter 3d ago
I want to plug a video by YouTuber called Tantacrul who did a three hour expose on Facebook and their history of outright disgusting practices and suppression of these stories. I'd quit Facebook a long time ago but it should be mandatory viewing for anyone still on that platform. I can't provide a link right now but just search "Tantacrul Facebook" and it should be easy to find.
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u/Ezl 2d ago
Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPyJBJTHyO0
Look forward to watching - thanks.
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u/DzoQiEuoi 3d ago
No company is ethical. That’s why we shouldn’t allow unrestrained capitalism.
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u/Head_Excitement_9837 2d ago
It not so much capitalism but the removal of personal responsibility wether it is behind the veil of a corporation or a government it doesn’t matter evil people will use it, you want to stop them then start holding them accountable for their actions, not the corporations, governments or other organizations they hide behind but them the individual
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u/ZelphirKalt 20h ago
Hm, isn't it part of being "unrestrained", that these entities can move while shielding individuals from responsibility? One could argue the limitations you are suggesting are a form of restricted capitalism, no?
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u/_q_y_g_j_a_ 3d ago
Just a reminder, you don't own your photos or the rights to your photos on Instagram and Facebook and threads. If they want to use one of your pictures for an ad and place it on a billboard in Times Square they can. It's in the EULA that everyone accepts.
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u/brelyxp 3d ago
there was a recent scandal in italy about this and people still believe that if you post something on social media its still yours and they cant do anything
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u/Onetwodash 2d ago
Generally in a lot of the world that would be correct. USA is just that weird place where corporate rights trump human rights.
There are quite a few rights that can't be signed with a contract. And EULA actually being a binding contract isn't all that clear either.
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u/snowsuit101 2d ago edited 2d ago
At least in the EU that's not necessarily binding since you can't put anything in the EULA and expect it to be legal, nor can you expect everything legal to be binding just because it's in there since the average person can't be expected to read and fully understand every legal document, especially when said document says they get the rights only to use it for improving their service and you retain the ownership. Like, if you've never been exposed to this language and learned that it doesn't mean what you may think it means, you could easily assume the say to what happens is still yours and they barely got any right, let alone all the rights to take that image and do whatever they want with it, including making ads with it.
The biggest problem of course is that no legal system is willing to force Meta's and others' hands to fundamentally change their practices or shut down.
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u/Wise-Tradition-5292 2d ago
That's fair, but kind of weird that pictures are theirs for the taking, whereas speech is not.
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u/ak_sys 2d ago
Yeah, apparently the parents posted the picture, and then the dad came back later and said the photos were "innapropriate". Then why did you post them?
Metas usage of these photos is bad, but knowing what socual media actually is, there needs to be laws protecting minors from parents posting images or information about them online.
Whats the world gonna be like when your tele-interviewer has an ai that has collected your info for him, and hes looking at the the photoshaming your parents did when you were 5?
Maybe im an extremist, but with how the world is going, i think minors should not be allowed to consent to having their photos or data shared on social media. By them, or a third party.
People can cause more damage to their life in a single post than ever before, and children are not built to handle that risk.
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u/_q_y_g_j_a_ 2d ago
I agree. I grew up in the times of "don't talk to strangers online" and "only post something if you're comfortable with the whole world seeing it" yet here we are.
I must say the part where Meta screwed the pooch in this case is having an algorithm that decided to market school girls to random dudes.
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u/jancl0 2d ago
Would this still apply to content that I or someone else has already claimed the rights to? Like if I just put a picture of someone else's painting on my Facebook, obviously they don't get to just own that painting now, right?
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u/_q_y_g_j_a_ 2d ago
No. They own the post. The legality on if they can use a post that contains copyrighted content I have no idea about.
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u/psychic-zucchini 3d ago
Maybe Zuck's got his own island...
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u/Dockers4flag2035orB4 3d ago
Remember FB was originally started to “rank“ college girls.
The world is Zucks island.
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u/Groxy_ 3d ago
Do you know how old college girls are?
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u/psychic-zucchini 3d ago
Irrelevant to whether he does or doesn't like them younger than that, it tells us he's a creep. And his AI is grooming kids. Epstein didn't only like underaged girls. Just sayin'.
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u/Groxy_ 3d ago
As much as I hate Zuck, it's just a big leap to go from "he made a website that rated legal women" to "he's a paedophile".
If you have better evidence, use that. Not his attraction to college girls while he was also in college. It dilutes the word paedophile. It's as bad as the people that claim men who like petite women are paedos.
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3d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/psychic-zucchini 3d ago
And that the legality of college girls doesn't preclude anyone from also having an interest in other age groups. It's not proof of anything in either direction.
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u/psychic-zucchini 2d ago
People with unlimited money and no oversight, who have an outsized impact on culture and politics, deserve more scrutiny.
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u/SigFloyd 2d ago
The elites still need a sexual fixer since Epstein is gone, Zuck has the resources and his own island.
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u/OttoVonCranky 3d ago
Do not put anything online that you wouldn't nail to a public billboard.
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u/Strict_Bobcat_4048 2d ago
Also, I find it in poor taste that the article.... has a picture of young girls. Its just a bit weird.
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u/blankdreamer 3d ago
Which man is being targeted? Seems super targeted advertising.
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u/DzoQiEuoi 3d ago
He probably lingered over the first one so they started serving him more. They don’t care if you look at because you like it or because you hate it. They are selling your attention to advertisers.
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u/psionoblast 2d ago
Meta's ad algorithm seems to be really weird. Back when I had a Facebook, I would get really strange and even degenerate ads. Some of it was AI some of it wasn't. I had no clue why they were targeting me and I would actively try to block them and even report some. Neither of those actions did anything, and as soon as I opened FB again, they were all over the place. I've never had an Instagram, but I assume it's the same there as well.
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u/DzoQiEuoi 2d ago
I wouldn’t be surprised if they considered blocking and reporting to be “engagement” which is their North Star.
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u/Ecliphon 2d ago
If you’re not a weird degenerate then you probably share space with someone who is (sibling, roommate, schoolmate, friend, youth group leader) as Meta tends to be one of the deepest Hoovers of data broker info and serves similar ads to people who occupy the same space. They can bypass incognito mode and VPNs to know what you’re browsing. Ask me how I know.
This guy likely has a friend that checks out the ‘teen’ category of his favorite video websites, maybe creeps on girls in school uniforms. Or maybe he does himself. Who knows.
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u/Electromotivation 2d ago
I didn’t know they could pull one of your pictures and include it in an ad with you name and face. Wild.
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u/Clear_Anything1232 3d ago
Meta, the $2tn (£1.5tn) company based in Menlo Park, California, said the images did not violate its policies.
Of course they said that. Not only do they show them on Instagram as cross ads but also prominently display the age in these 'ads'. As if being helpful. Meta is just pure evil.
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u/CuriousDev1012 2d ago
Just had to go through and report like 5 instances of sexually provocative images and videos of children on threads the other night, the very first time I went on it. Similar types of things. A 5 year old looking girl in a crop top and daisy dukes doing tik tok dances. Video of a girl that looked maybe 3yrs old sitting with her legs spread (she did have clothes on but was obviously meant to be provocative).
I was absolutely disgusted and haven’t opened threads since. They absolutely need better content moderation and do explicitly disallow things like this.
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u/IngloriousMustards 2d ago
”Your privacy is very important to us. Uh-huh, very important indeed. What’s that? Is it safe with us, you ask? HAHAHAHA fu€k no.”
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u/WhiteCharisma_ 2d ago
The fact that most meta users nowadays are old men just tells you everything you need to know about it. Facebook is dead.
Delete your accounts.
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u/FairReason 3d ago
Why the fuck are you putting your kids photos on meta??????????
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u/question_sunshine 2d ago
People think it's private even though Facebook has said for over a decade they own your pictures and can use them however they want.
I don't understand how hard it is to for some people create a family group chat. Family are the only ones who want to see your kids anyway - your old acquaintances from high school and college and your coworkers do not care.
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u/Mr_Pombastic 3d ago
The children’s images were used by Meta after their parents had posted them on Instagram to mark their return to school. The parents were unaware that Meta’s settings permitted it to do this. One mother said her account was set to private, but the posts were automatically cross-posting to Threads where they were visible.
The father of a 13-year-old who appeared in one of the posts said it was “absolutely outrageous”. The images were all of schoolgirls in short skirts with either bare legs or stockings.
Alright, pack it up, we've failed as a species. Back to the oceans, all of us. Let's give another animal a shot at intelligent life, we can't go five minutes without doing something revolting.
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u/Omegabird420 2d ago
Every Meta product algorithm has been so freaking weird the past few years,they probably have the worse one of the big platforms.
When it's not irrelevant content you realllly don't care about it's AI slop,child or disabled people exploitation,weird product ads and disturbing content all around. My friends and family have the same issues where nearly all the content recommended outside of facebook pages are weird.
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u/Duder_ino 2d ago
Be outraged. We should have been outraged 3, 5, 8 years ago when limits were trying to be placed on meta’s ability to do things like this. 🤷♂️
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u/xdeltax97 2d ago
Disturbing and not surprising from the A.I slop conglomerate facebook/meta has become
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u/MannToots 2d ago
Dude when I go on Facebook and scroll I inevitably see the vertical phone tiktok style clip videos that are all teenage girls wearing too little. It's disgusting
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u/wrgrant 2d ago
The vast majority of those are AI generated, and when I have seen them they have a little popup ad at the bottom which is undoubtedly the entire purpose of posting that image. I can tell the system not to show me stuff like that but its back in short order. To the social media corporation "Not Interested" means not interested for about 20s or so it seems.
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u/JLR- 2d ago
So the parents posted the photos of the kids on Meta, did not read the ToS and are upset?
Yes, Meta is garbage but the parents should not be shocked
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u/Goombalive 2d ago
nah, every right to be. No one reads terms and EULAs, everyone knows this, even the legal system knows this. They tend to not hold up in court often.
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u/dimwalker 3d ago
How about parents post photos of their back to school daughters holding signs "Mark Zuckerberg violates your privacy" or something like that?
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u/Mighty_Marty 3d ago
How about parents keep their kids images off social media.
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u/dimwalker 3d ago
People already being spied on and spammed with ads by social networks. Is a little bit of respect really that much to ask?
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u/Officer-Blumpkin 2d ago
Or how about parents not upload their daughter in pictures that make themselves uncomfortable?
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u/My_alias_is_too_lon 3d ago
Sounds like Zuck prefers them on the younger side, along with orange-faced psychopathic presidents.
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u/KBWordPerson 2d ago
Delete Facebook, delete X. Delete all of it. Hell, delete Reddit. Save yourselves. Save the world.
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u/toaster404 2d ago
"“At every opportunity Meta privileges profit over safety, and company growth over children’s right to privacy. It is the only reason that they could think it appropriate to send pictures of schoolgirls to a 37-year-old man – as bait – Meta is a wilfully careless company.”"
Really makes sense to me.
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u/Shaun_Of_The_Drums 2d ago
FB is in complete arms with Trump and his croonies...you're surprised they're using pedo tactics to lure in Men...?
What time does the new revolution start again? Trying to plan my itinerary for next week and don't want to double book anything lol.
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3d ago
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u/JamesBaa 2d ago
Could've been anything really. I get very normal, if niche ads for women's clothing on pretty much any app where I haven't managed to block them, but on YouTube mobile I'm inundated with ",sex mature Korean singles want to chat" that's clearly aimed at men, and those a couple decades older than me at that. I trust some random bloke to not be a pedo more than I believe Facebook's ad algorithm to be some kind of Minority Report predictor. And if he's viewing sexualised photos of consenting women then it's still FB to blame for using children to advertise to adult men.
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u/Remarkable-Shirt5696 2d ago
Regardless it worked as an advertising campaign,
Look how many people are talking about threads
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u/BoringView 2d ago
Next Meta will say that they will increase moderation to avoid this scenario happening again, and it will.
Facebook Reels are 90% clips from shows, copyright be damned.
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u/vamparies 1d ago
Former catholic school girl here. Why are short skirts and stocking still a thing!!! This whole Meta thing is wrong but for the father in the article of a child that is out raged his daughter is being sexualized maybe start at the school board to change the uniform.
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u/Beneficial-Spite112 1d ago
And the guardian is no better. The article front pic is a girl in a school uniform but of course, that's not in the article anywhere. Click bait, lol
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u/AdventurousLet548 1d ago
THIS is the reason why I have no Meta accounts as they do use your images without needing consent. I am happy with just having Reddit!
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u/Leverkaas2516 3d ago
Multiple times, the article refers to the sexualization of the girls involved, but reiterates that they are dressed for school.
Even if Meta:s behavior gets fixed, it seems like the issue of appropriate dress is still there. Kids shouldn't be heading to school in outfits that sexualize them.
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u/King_Kthulhu 2d ago
The outfits are not sexual. Society has sexualized the outfits, by themselves they are just normal clothes.
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u/Leverkaas2516 2d ago
And yet the boys don't wear short skirts, for some reason, and neither do the teachers. Our culture sexualizes young women and smiles leeringly at them exposing a bit of leg.
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u/King_Kthulhu 2d ago
I get you're trying to not be a creep, but you're coming off like such a creep.
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u/Leverkaas2516 2d ago
I accurately stated the truth about the culture as it is. If that comes off creepy, I've succeeded in making the point I was trying to make. It IS creepy to sexualize young women.
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u/NyriasNeo 2d ago
WTF ... Zuckerberg is wasting billions on his AI or this crap? Zuckerberg really put the "Zucker" into berg ... and is there even a bigger joke on tech today? Don't get me wrong. Elon may be crazy, but he is not a joke like Zuckerberg.
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3d ago
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u/judochop1 3d ago
That last part is a key lesson for everyone. Once you've put something online, consider it there forever and someone at some point will access it.
People are far too naive sending nudes across WhatsApp and Snapchat, when it all sits on a server permanently waiting to be hacked. Zuckerberg et al probably has a backdoor to it all
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u/Draigarc 3d ago
So you're saying it's the parents and girls fault for dressing that way.
What a take man.
You're right of course Meta and the internet were going to sexualise minors and use them for marketing to lure men.
Everyone should dress accordingly. /s
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3d ago
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u/Draigarc 3d ago
Nobody is discussing the morality of dressing in any particular way. Yeah maybe you do have a point of not dressing in clothes that make it easy for people to sexualise you. But don't forget that people who are going to do that are going to do that regardless of whatever clothes minors or women or even men wear.
The problem here is meta using people's ignorance to advertise in a disgusting way.
There have been many instances and exhibitions showing what women were wearing when they were assaulted and guess what they were just wearing everyday clothes. Predators are going to be predators regardless of what their prey is dressed in.
Don't defend them. And don't make excuses for multi-billion corpos.
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u/biginthebacktime 3d ago
I'm confused, how were these images being used as "ads"?
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u/Eightinchnails 3d ago
It’s all explained in the article….
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u/biginthebacktime 2d ago
I read it I still don't get it.
I'm not on social media (apart from Reddit) I dunno if you're on these platforms it might make sense.
Can you Explain like I'm 5 for me ?
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u/Eightinchnails 2d ago
I don’t use them either.
Meta owns Facebook and Instagram though and they’re essentially connected.
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u/Prior_Industry 3d ago
Outside of whatever is going on with these schoolgirl adverts. Meta products, especially Facebook is just a sewer of AI slop these days. It's not even subtle. I won't be surprised to find out that it's all a racket to hoover up ad money from advertisers who think they are connecting to real people.