\n<\/p>\n
Meta has used back-to-school pictures of schoolgirls to advertise one of its social media platforms to a 37-year-old man, in a move parents described as \u201coutrageous\u201d and \u201cupsetting\u201d.<\/p>\n
The man noticed that posts encouraging him to \u201cget Threads\u201d, Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s rival to Elon Musk\u2019s X, were being dropped into his Instagram feed featuring embedded posts of uniformed girls as young as 13 with their faces visible and, in most cases, their names.<\/p>\n
The children\u2019s 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\u2019s 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. Another said she posted the picture to a public Instagram account. The posts of their children were highlighted to the stranger as \u201csuggested threads\u201d.<\/p>\n
The recipient told the Guardian the posts felt \u201cdeliberately provocative and ultimately exploitative of the children and families involved\u201d.<\/p>\n
The father of a 13-year-old who appeared in one of the posts said it was \u201cabsolutely outrageous\u201d. The images were all of schoolgirls in short skirts with either bare legs or stockings.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Meta, the $2tn (\u00a31.5tn) company based in Menlo Park, California, said the images did not violate its policies. It said it recommended people to visit Threads by showing them publicly shared photos that comply with its community standards and recommendation guidelines. Its systems do not recommend Threads shared by teenagers, but these were posts made from adults\u2019 accounts that were set to allow public viewing.<\/p>\n
The man who received the posts said that as he was only sent promotional posts of schoolgirls \u2013 there were no boys in school uniform, for example \u2013 there appeared to be \u201can aspect of sexualisation\u201d.<\/p>\n
The mother of a 15-year-old whose picture was used in a promotional post that featured a large \u201cGet Threads\u201d button said: \u201cFor me it was a picture of my daughter going to school. I had no idea Instagram had picked it up and are using it as a promotion. It\u2019s absolutely disgusting. She is a minor.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she would have refused consent and \u201cnot for any money in the world would I let them use a girl dressed in a school uniform to get people on to [its platform]\u201d.<\/p>\n
With 267 followers, her Instagram account usually had modest reach but the post of her child attracted nearly 7,000 views, 90% from non-followers, half of whom were aged over 44 and 90% of whom were men.<\/p>\n
Another mother whose post of her 13-year-old was used in a promotional post said: \u201cMeta did all of this on purpose, not informing us, as they want to generate content. It\u2019s despicable. And who is responsible for creating that Threads ad using children\u2019s photos to promote the platform for older men?\u201d<\/p>\n
Meta said it called such posts \u201crecommendation tools\u201d and that public postscould be used for this purpose.<\/p>\n
A company spokesperson said: \u201cThe images shared do not violate our policies and are back-to-school photos posted publicly by parents. We have systems in place to help make sure we don\u2019t recommend Threads shared by teens, or that go against our recommendation guidelines, and users can control whether Meta suggests their public posts on Instagram.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 37-year-old Instagram user from London who received the posts and asked to remain anonymous said: \u201cOver several days I was repeatedly served Meta adverts for Threads that exclusively featured parents\u2019 images of their daughters in school uniform, some revealing their names. As a father, I find it deeply inappropriate for Meta to repurpose these posts in targeted promotion to adults.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n He said he had not posted or liked any similar images before he was sent the schoolgirl pictures.<\/p>\n \u201cTo me, showcasing such content as trending or popular feels deliberately provocative and ultimately exploitative of the children and families involved, putting their online safety at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n Beeban Kidron, a crossbench peer and campaigner for children\u2019s rights online, said: \u201cOffering up school-age girls as bait to advertise a commercial service is a new low even for Meta.<\/p>\n \u201cAt every opportunity Meta privileges profit over safety, and company growth over children\u2019s 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 \u2013 as bait \u2013 Meta is a wilfully careless company.\u201d<\/p>\n She called on the regulator Ofcom to consider if measures, introduced this summer to prevent unknown adults connecting to children, make clear that \u201ccompanies cannot offer sexualised images of children as bait to unknown men\u201d.<\/p>\n Ofcom\u2019s illegal harms codes intended to tackle online grooming require that \u201cchildren\u2019s profiles and locations \u2013 as well as friends and connections \u2013 should not be visible to other users\u201d.<\/p>\n Meta\u2019s system means that if a Threads profile is public, posts on adult profiles may be suggested on Facebook or Instagram \u201cso people can discover, follow, and interact with you\u201d. These suggestions can be turned off or the Threads profile can be switched to private.<\/p>\n