subcommittee for crime and terrorism<\/a> within the Judiciary Committee. \u201cAdvertisers understand that when people don\u2019t feel good about themselves, it\u2019s often a good time to pitch a product \u2014 people are more likely to buy something.\u201d<\/p>\nShe said the company was letting advertisers know when the teens were depressed so they could be served an ad at the best time. As an example, she suggested that if a teen girl deleted a selfie, advertisers might see that as a good time to sell her a beauty product as she may not be feeling great about her appearance. They also targeted teens with ads for weight loss when young girls had concerns around body confidence, Wynn-Williams said. <\/p>\n
She claimed that Meta was aware that users aged 13-17 were a vulnerable but \u201cvery valuable\u201d demographic to advertisers, which was the motive.<\/p>\n
In fact, she said that one business leader at the company even explained to her that Facebook was aware that it has the \u201cmost valuable segment of the population\u201d for advertisers, teens, and said that Meta should be \u201ctrumpeting it from the rooftops.\u201d<\/p>\n
At the time, Wynn-Williams had been suggesting to the exec that a trillion-dollar company was not short on money and didn\u2019t need to go this route to add a little more to its coffers.<\/p>\n
If Meta was willing to target teens based on their emotional states, it stands to reason they\u2019d do the same to adults. And one document displayed during the hearing showed an example of just that, it turned out.<\/p>\n
In a screenshot of an internal chat, a Facebook policy director asks if it\u2019s true that Facebook was doing research into young mothers and their emotional state, to which another person replied, \u201cyes,\u201d even joking that they may ask their \u201capparently morally bankrupt colleagues\u201d if there was any other research like this.<\/p>\n
Adding a bit more color to her comments, Wynn-Williams also noted that it had surprised her how many Silicon Valley executives didn\u2019t let their own children use the products they built.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say, \u2018Oh has your teen used the new product we\u2019re about to launch?,\u2019\u201d Wynn-Williams said. \u201cAnd they\u2019re like, \u2018My teenagers are not allowed on Facebook. I don\u2019t have my teenager on Instagram.\u2019 These executives \u2026 they know. They know the harm this product does. They don\u2019t allow their own teenagers to use the products that Meta develops. The hypocrisy is at every level.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a company statement, Meta denied the allegations in Wynn-Williams\u2019 testimony, calling them \u201cdivorced from reality and riddled with false claims.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meta whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams, the former Director of Global Public Policy for Facebook and author of the recently released tell-all book \u201cCareless People,\u201d told U.S. senators during her testimony on Wednesday that Meta actively targeted teens with advertisements based on their emotional state. This claim was first documented by Wynn-Williams in her book, which documents […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":161103,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-161102","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161102\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161103"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}