You can upload content to your hearts content, but ads are not actually 'approved' until they running.
And there's no way to actually 'target' without running an ad ... which they didn't do ... so ...
If they were looking for hard evidence, they could have in fact put $5 into FB, and put the ad 'live' and simply taken it down once it was approved, but before it received any views (though technically that might not be perfectly possible, it is pragmatically possible).
It's possible to mine data sets, and do queries on userbase behaviours etc, but none of that would be in the context of a specific ad being run. I think this is also what the article alludes to, and it crosses streams with the other part of the story and probably causes confusion.
All of that aside, the notion that FB, a $800B company is going to risk that by blatantly running ads for alcohol to minors where it is clearly illegal kind of defies the logic of a very self-interested entity like Facebook.
How much money would they make from that, while risking sanctions and major fallout? Probably almost none, as the buyers of ads would probably be doing something illegal, how many breweries are going to be running ads to 14 year olds? Basically none, so there's no money in this activity, and only downside.
More appropriately, it would help the case if someone, somewhere in Australia actually found FB ads that are targeting children.
Finally, there is nowhere them to hide, making the claims a little more suspicious. Everyone on the planet, can right now (including you reading this), pop open Facebook, upload an ad and try to run it. Judge, police, regulators, you, me, anyone in the world can just 'see for ourselves' at a moments notice, at any time, with less than 5 minutes without any need for complicated research - find out if FB is really enabling vaping ads to teenagers. It seems odd that something so illegal would be so out in the open, visible to everyone.
Edit: not 'defending' FB here, just calling out what I see as possibly a big inconsistency and problems with truthiness.
I've never been a fan of Facebook, I loathed them from the start, but facts are facts, and this story does not pass the smell test, we'll need to see more data.
There are probably a ton of legit things to deal with on FB, I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt they are running vaping ads to kids.
And they're extremely successful - I see several such ads every day. They vary from microdosing (using drugs is illegal here) to obvious scams. It looks FB completely got rid of manual review and decided algorithms can approve ads. And it failed spectacularly because any algorithm can be gamed by a creative human. Who is held accountable for it? Nobody. Something that has negative influence on others lives is presented as just a glitch in the system, not a result of an ethical decision "Yes, we can accept some percentage of scams as long as we maximize value from serving ads."
Inline with your point, the report states that the ads were not actually run, which kind of invalidates their argument. They state they were ‘approved’.
But their motivation was likely to get a specific headline across the media, and that appears to be working.
A good journalist has a pretty strict code of ethics that they won’t cross under any circumstances. Getting an ad approved without running it doesn’t cross the code of ethics for most journalists, but running it would (even for 5 minutes; don’t blame them, selling gambling to random kids is bad for any amount of minutes, especially if you can’t go and debrief your victims).
I think getting an ad like this approved is news worthy in and of it self, even though nothing illegal nor immoral was directly demonstrated. What was demonstrated is the potential for this to happen, and that what you would expect to be a safeguard against this (an approval process) is either not a safeguard at all or is insufficient. Either way it is news worthy (albeit the latter case a lot more news worthy; but harder to investigate).
The problem with facebook is that it is so personalized and it is really hard for a third party to investigate any other person’s experience. For a journalist investigating what goes on for other people is hard at best. Seeing what gets approved is one way of investigating.
Why comment about how “it’s legal there” or “teens already do it” or “it’s really the advertisers’ fault”? Where does defending Facebook’s behavior get you?
In the end it is the democratically elected people’s job to make the laws in the public’s interest.
Ban advertising to minors.
""Citing ethical concerns, Reset Australia did not pay for the advertisements and they did not run on the Facebook platform, but the group believes they had passed the company's internal checks""
Asking because I am not sure if Facebook should be making the shots here on what is legal or illegal to advertise. This is best handled through government.
Edit: changed the example
I do agree though and would go further and make it illegal to show ads to anyone whose profile states they are under 18.
A complaint first has to be raised with Ad Standards, who undertake ethical review on a case-by-case basis.
That is, it is generally illegal to market to those who are underage, but it is not generally illegal to display such advertising in a space where those who are outside of the target audience.
The usual legal process is to review individual ads, and those creating the adverts are the ones who end up in trouble. An entire marketplace (like Facebook) deciding that marketing to minors is okay is untested waters, because each individual advert would normally be ruled illegal so why the hell would the market allow it?
[0] https://www.abac.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/ABAC-Resp...
They even created a new entity (Mission Winnow) in 2018 which is purportedly an initiative “to create engagement around the role of science, technology and innovation as a powerful force for good in any industry”, whatever that means. Conveniently, MW has the same color scheme and a suspiciously similar "M" logo to Marlboro, and surprise, they've been a title sponsor of the Ferrari cars since, though they didn't use the branding in 2020 after countries started investigating whether they were flaunting the ad ban.
Ethically, you often have an obligation to do more than the bare legal minimum in order to not be a horrible person.
There's a huge difference between targeting an age group and the age group being exposed by association.
If you saw ads on the Sunday morning cartoons for whiskey and gambling, you could rightly say they are targeting children.
Ads put on during a football game that targets 25-50 year olds that may happen to have younger viewers != targeting those younger viewers.
Facebook is targeting 13-17 year olds.
For instance if your social media account says you are less than 18 then it should be illegal to show any ad to you.
This will have the additional benefit of internet communication technology companies having to rethink kids as a profit center.
You obviously can't completely ban it, since kids under 18 would still have access to cable TV, and therefore advertisments.
But I could see a system where -targeting- kids under 18 would be banned, whereas advertising as a whole is not illegal for < 18 so long as the advertisements kids are seeing aren't specifically targeted only at minors.
The article briefly mentions that the relatively restrictive laws around traditional advertising haven’t kept up with social media. I think that should be the focus of the article; we know companies (including those wanting to advertise and advertisement platforms) will do absolutely everything they are not forbidden from doing if it brings them more money. They might still do the forbidden things anyway if the punishment isn’t substantial. They won’t stop doing this out of the goodness of their pockets, I mean hearts. It’s an unfortunate reality for most of us, but it’s how things work currently.
We should be holding our politicians accountable for their total lack of digital awareness and their general willingness to prioritise money and power over their constituents. With the Murdoch media profiting from and controlling the narrative, the ABC is one major outlet that might be able to switch people on to these issues, but they turn out this ungrammatical drivel instead.
I wonder how many requests for advertising to a given group they have. I imagine it's a scary high number.
Should it be stopped? If it violates the law, absolutely; but, we should recognize it for what it is, not some nefarious, evil plot to harm the young of multiple nations.
And with the second figure - with the gambling, drinking, and dating ads, I don't really get how the final one could be construed absolutely as a dating ad. "Find your gentleman" could be a service for connecting polite but lonely friends.
If these are representative of ads that they got approved and disapproved I think their methodology was flawed. It would be easier to look at examples of advertisements that explicitly minor-owned accounts actually saw on their feed that advertise adult services.
The money emoji and "gentlemen" is clearly associating it with sugar daddies. That would be universally understood in that age cohort, and in the higher part of that range, probably even clicked on often.
There's the more mild ads, sure, but the worse ones are really where the issues lie, like the blatant gambling ones.
We somehow expect FB to arbitrate but that’s just not possible. It isn’t even their fault in the end - they operate within legal boundaries.
We should make it unlawful to advertise to people under 18 and prosecute offenders, harshly.
They might not get 100% accuracy, but pretty close, especially if Marky thought the fine might make him less wealthy.
I’m pretty sure parent is referring to the latter.
Yes, let's get ads out of cartoons and out of newspapers that carry comics sections. I'm sure that will go well.
It was going pretty well actually but has been watered down in the recent years with the proliferation of American content that often contains ad hidden in the content it self.
So if the elephant in the room here (USA) would step up their game and ban ads to children, it would unironically go just fine.
Facebook has too many things to look at from pornography, violence, cornona virus, election integrity and now even this?
>The findings were revealed in a report, released today, by lobby group Reset Australia — the local arm of a global initiative working to "counter digital threats to democracy".
It's also curious that, to this day, cigarette companies target children even younger in developing nations. This also is terrible.
I think alcohol/vaping/gambling ads are a net negative when advertised to minors, causing addiction in a lot of cases.
- Gives children a chance to materially understand the meaning of a dollar
- Allows for demonstrations of propositional logic and formal reasoning
