Facebook approves alcohol, vaping and gambling ads targeting 13-17 year olds
abc.net.auWithout a link to the actual report, which hopefully contains more information, anyone who's ever spent $5 running a campaign on FB would know this is a little suspicious.
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.
Yes, this reads like it was written by someone who has never run a real Facebook ad. Facebook routinely accidentally blocks legitimate advertisers from running normal, compliant ads, and there's a massive underground devoted to beating Facebook's algorithms to get non-compliant ads running. This looks like they just got lucky with a few ad sets, and since they never set them active, it looks like they might've not been approved, anyway.
> there's a massive underground devoted to beating Facebook's algorithms to get non-compliant ads running.
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."
Here is a link to the report: https://au.reset.tech/uploads/resettechaustralia_profiling-c...
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.
Not saying you’re wrong, but this feels like a pretty convenient separation for facebook to hide behind.
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.
I think it's important to recognize that Reset Australia is a traditional media lobby group, and that this report amounts to a zero-day attack on Facebook's automated advertising system. Facebook would never choose to advertise these products to children for a variety of reasons. Reading the sentiment in this thread, when exactly did we create the expectation that Facebook (or any social media entity) must execute as a perfect moral system?
They have a nasty problem of behaving completely amorally until someone points it out.
Drinking harms the adolescent brain.
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?
Because when condemning someone's actions, you need to be sure to condemn what they've actually done wrong and not things that you wouldn't condemn someone else for if they weren't Facebook.
You get job offers from FB recruiters.
My prediction: there will never be a bottom for facebook.
Companies - specifically large public for-profit companies - are amoral entities solely concerned with maximizing their profits. That Facebook acts seemingly without any morals isn't all that surprising.
If I were a shareholder I’d only expect them to operate within the law. Or if the CEO was unsure then hold a shareholder vote (though I’d rather the CEO do their job and not bother us).
In the end it is the democratically elected people’s job to make the laws in the public’s interest.
Ban advertising to minors.
This is such a “le late stage capitalism” sentiment that I see posted all the time. It completely misrepresents the responsibility of a public company to operate in its shareholders’ best interest.
I think the underlying effort with that sentiment is not to agree on what companies' responsibilities or "ethics" are, but rather to create enough guardrails (legislation, rules, public sentiment through the free press, etc.) for companies that they can't act immorally or unethically.
I think it's high time we stop assigning personalities to companies, expecting them to be "good people", and start legislating them to prevent them from harming people and the planet in the first place.
If you feel that it's being misrepresented, feel free to represent it properly.
> shareholders’ best interest.
Which is commonly understood in just financial terms. But when you think about it in a more open way, shareholders have children, too, and any action of the company that is negative for the society cannot be said it's in shareholders' best interest. (This is regardless of whether what the report says is actually true.)
>the responsibility of a public company to operate in its shareholders’ best interest
The shareholders are only interested in profits.
This made me think of one analogy, that shareholders just want heat in their homes and there are two ways to produce heat: by destroying something (burning oil, the nuclear reaction) or by creating something (fusion). The former is much easier and unless the laws prevent this low effort business, the heating company will happily burn forests, poison rivers and sell the future of the young people if necessary.
Not really. If Facebook (and the rest of them) keep burning bridges and making enemies, in this political climate, they're going to get broken up or even liquidated if enough users leave. That is not in shareholder interest.
And how are profits gained? Ideally, in providing goods or services of value to society.
In a competitive free market the profit incentive is actually the 'who can do the most good for society' incentive.
this part seems important:
""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""
I wonder what would have happened if they had? Maybe redirect it to a blank page? Might not have passed an ethics board (but hey, who knows nowadays!) if they actually advertised it though.
While it is obviously unethical, is advertising alcohol, vaping and gambling to 13-17 year olds illegal in Australia?
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.
Yes. It is absolutely illegal. Not sure anywhere where this would be legal. Ie. "TV or radio ads about alcohol cannot target children. They also should not be irresponsible in targeting adults." https://www.acma.gov.au/ads-alcohol-tobacco-or-therapeutic-g...
Edit: changed the example
What does that have to do with this?
I do agree though and would go further and make it illegal to show ads to anyone whose profile states they are under 18.
You can't, as in any developed nation I can think of, advertise alcohol to children. Take a look at the actions the industry has taken when they even put alcohol ads too close to children, or too appealing to children, ctrl-f for moon dog. https://www.abac.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ABAC-Quar...
You cannot advertise alcohol to children in Australia
That's... A complicated question. It does appear to be a breach of ABAC Responsible Alcohol Marketing Code (3b) [0], but the ABAC would only review it if a complaint was raised.
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...
In my country (not AU) they banned alcohol advertising completely a couple of years ago, because alcoholism is a big problem here. So instead of advertising alcohol, the breweries now advertise their alcohol free drinks. They just changed "Carlsberg" to "Carlsberg Alcohol Free" on the same ads, and boom it's allowed.
Reminds me of cigarette advertising in Formula 1, where brands like Phillip Morris have constantly tried to find new ways to sneak imagery and color schemes onto the cars that are reminiscent of their branding despite cigarette ads being banned in the early 2000s. There have been cars the looked exactly like a Marlboro pack (red car, white chevron rear wing), sponsored by Marlboro, but without the actual word Marlboro that have been allowed to race.
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.
That is not how ethics and laws interact. The law sets a minimum standard that can be enforced by the government with a penalty. No matter what Facebook does, they are not deciding what is or is not legal.
Ethically, you often have an obligation to do more than the bare legal minimum in order to not be a horrible person.
When watching TV during a football (Aussie rules football not soccer) game I see probably 15-20 gambling ads and so would the 0-17 year olds watching. There is also an ad with Matthew McConaughey drinking whiskey, although im not sure if that's during prime time or late hours. Never seen a smoking or vaping ad though.
Yes but they can't run alongside children's programming or feature themes that are intended for children. Eg, they can't target 13 to 17 year olds even if it's during sports
>When watching TV during a football (Aussie rules football not soccer) game I see probably 15-20 gambling ads and so would the 0-17 year olds watching.
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.
Never said there wasn't...
Agreed. Instead of expecting a for-profit company to decide what’s ok we should simply pass laws that makes advertising to people under 18 illegal.
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.
Banning advertising to kids under 18 is a pretty interesting idea.
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.
Pension funds demand more profits, FB complies and sells teenagers (i.e. the nation's future) to the alcohol and gambling industry. This is pretty much what America is about these days: the top 1% is milking the bottom 50% and hardly anybody cares about the future.
Tax the billionaires more tbh
Shameful that the ABC doesn’t know the difference between teenager’s and teenagers’.
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 if this is automated. Somebody wants to advertise _something_ to a demographic and Facebook doesn't have any sort of checks in place; or, they do have checks, but the ads lie about it and Facebook doesn't validate it.
I wonder how many requests for advertising to a given group they have. I imagine it's a scary high number.
It's absolutely automated, but it begs the question, should it be allowed to be, particularly when dealing with minors? It seems crazy this case slipped through to exist when Facebook has been around for so long.
The associated comments that are downvoted seem to imply that Facebook intended for this to happen and it wasn't just automation and bureaucracy.
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.
>but, we should recognize it for what it is, not some nefarious, evil plot to harm the young of multiple nations.
no, it's much worse. Nefarious evil plotters at least need to sleep and eat and eventually they might grow tired of their evil scheming. This is much more miserable, this is simply the invisible hand doing its job and harming the young of multiple nations with a ruthless efficiency and precision that makes most comic super-villains look sloppy in comparison
While possibly true, we need to attack it from that angle. If you look at a person and go "you are evil!!" you win no one. If you go to someone and say "I'm seeing some behavior in the system you designed. Was this intended? It's harming people, can we fix it?" you recognize them as human and don't assume harmful intent. Then, the both of you can work to solve the problem. If you go at it the other way, you're attacking _them_ and they'll defend by arguing that it's an emergent behavior of the algorithm and there's no evil intended.
Do you give those same backpats, kind words and smooches to Philip Morris and the other tobacco companies who spent decades advertising to kids and teens? Or just the company who you may find yourself applying for a job with?
You're asking the wrong and a dishonest question.
I would give the same back pats to a newspaper company, when advertising tobacco at all was legal, if they let some advertisements slip through and get put on pages closer to articles meant for young people than they thought, or if they let some research papers that was co-funded by a tobacco company through to their write-ups.
Facebook is not the company making the ads, they're the ones approving the ads. There is a _meaningful_ difference.
True, it's not malicious intent; if facebook could squeeze every cent out of their platform while advertising scented candles, they certainly would. It's the indifference that matters though.
Not sure intent is relevant. Does intent matter when the system is so huge and no single person probably understands or directs it? The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does [1].
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha...
The ultimate issue is that Facebook is incentivized to allow more ads on the platform. Their ad system does need to be fixed, I agree.
Intent doesn't matter much, I agree; it's the final result, which is that they are advertising ads that make them more money, which is more commonly immoral things like gambling to minors, etc. Like I said, it's the fact that Facebook largely doesn't care where it goes as long as they make money (as can be seen by their ad systems) that is more telling than their intent.
I don't buy that philosophy for short-lived things that haven't had a chance to be acted upon.
If a system is in place and continues to do a thing after concerns are brought up, then absolutely, that's an argument that can be made; but, for each new class of mistake a system makes, you can't just say that that's what it was designed to do.
It's unfair to the designers, the people in the know, etc. You'll never win people over by telling them the thing they attempted to create, with many years of sweat and tears, was _designed_ to do something nefarious if it wasn't.
If they don't change after evidence to the contrary, then this can be brought up; but before then, it's inappropriate.
I’d agree if this was the first time bad behavior was uncovered. And it’s not just FB, Silicon Valley seems to have a big problem with big systems that, like Frankenstein, escaped the intent of their creators and fell into this algorithmic evil maximization trap.
This is probably the first time it's being reported in a meaningful way that their system enables targeting children for illegal products (presuming vaping is illegal in Australia or the United States for those under 18, which is a separate question, since the only one that passed looked like a vaping product if I understand what I saw in the article)
Some ads can never be posted on Facebook (prostitution, child pornography, murder for hire, firearms). Facebook is capable of filtering ads. It is mission critical for them to do so. It is the thing they are best at in the history of the known universe: showing the right ad for maximum value and not showing ads that are not of maximum value.
These ads are posted. This is intent.
Notice something about those ads excluded? They are simple red line unconditional "no's". Add in judgement calls and there will be fuck-ups. Of course lack of judgement can lead to its own class of fuck ups like offending people for "reject ads for military recruiting because they showed a gun in them".
By intent, I mean facebook does not choose specifically immoral things and it just happens to be super profitable; they show whatever is profitable, which happens to be immoral things. I don't mean "they don't mean to show bad ads" because they do, I mean "they would just as quickly choose another category if it meant more profits".
While not intended, at Facebook's age and scale, I think gross negligence is a fair assessment. That said, it seems like upthread there's questions on the validity of the report methodology, so probably standby on any diagnosis here.
> I think gross negligence is a fair assessment.
I'll buy this, for sure.
With a lot of things that are built, I think the collective of engineers may need to be more thoughtful about 2nd and 3rd order effects from the decisions that are being made or not made. Emergent Systems are absolutely a thing.
The first smoking rejected vs approved ad figure showed two pictures of people with smoke coming out of their mouths rejected and then one picture of someone holding an electric cigarette that was approved. The e-cig wasn't recognizeable to me, I'm not sure if those are great comparisons.
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.
>"Find your gentleman" could be a service for connecting polite but lonely friends.
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.
I hope this means they'll re-eval their policy on 21+ cannabis related ads. huge market potential
Cannabis is illegal at a federal level.
so is minors gambling (which is this case) - and also these ads never ran. so no change for cannabis and we can put our pitchforks down.
So is alcohol under 21?
Edit: looks like I learned something; thanks!
Drinking under 21 isn't illegal federally:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/23/158
It's just that if your state doesn't set their drinking age to a minimum of 21, they'll lose a big chunk of federal highway funding.
aksuhally...
https://drinkingage.procon.org/states-that-allow-underage-un...
turns out the laws are a little complicated.
Pass laws to make it illegal to advertise to people under 18.
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.
How in the hell can you expect advertisement in the 21st century to not reach minors? We might as well legislate that all minors must wear blindfolds at all times, or be blinded as they’re born.
Facebook brags about real identities only. If anyone could figure out an algorithm that identifies minors it's that company.
They might not get 100% accuracy, but pretty close, especially if Marky thought the fine might make him less wealthy.
There is a pretty stark difference between being exposed to ads and being targeted by ads. Ad mascots like Tony the Tiger selling sugared serials would never fly in the EU as it is obviously targeting children.
I’m pretty sure parent is referring to the latter.
Better not do anything at all, then.
> Pass laws to make it illegal to advertise to people under 18.
Yes, let's get ads out of cartoons and out of newspapers that carry comics sections. I'm sure that will go well.
It is already restricted or illegal in large part of the world, including the EU and the UK.
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.
Shouldn’t they be blaming the advertisers instead of Facebook?
Facebook has too many things to look at from pornography, violence, cornona virus, election integrity and now even this?
The advertisements were never shown- they were just added to their internal systems and were (thought to be) approved.
>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".
People without kids probably agree to this
I think some paying fb haters out there. All Similar allegations are made much more often by other social media networks. someone is hiding something.
Unsurprising because FB is all about maximizing profits at society's expense. They'd happily get into human trafficking and child prostitution if they could get away with it. At this point, they have instead created hundreds of millions of attention addicts, outrage consumers, and manufactured sentiments for the purposes of commercial advertising. Oh, and the occasional genocide [0].
It's also curious that, to this day, cigarette companies target children even younger in developing nations. This also is terrible.
Why? Because money
I guess I just don't really care if teenagers are doing the same things I did as a teenager.
My father grew up when it was incredibly common in high school to smoke a lot of cigarettes. Many in his class have since died of lung cancer. In my high school, vapes are the most dangerous thing I've seen. Generally, you hope the next generation grows up a little bit better than the previous one.
I think alcohol/vaping/gambling ads are a net negative when advertised to minors, causing addiction in a lot of cases.
I don't think there should be a minimum legal age for any of these activities. It's beyond clear that coddling helicopter government invoked disastrous consequences for Western society
Can you name some of those consequences in "western society" you believe were caused by "coddling helicopter gov't" actions, similar to regulating advertising addictive products to minors?
Yes. Society-wide we see an increased abdication of personal responsibility and general apathy. Increased mental illness. Severe feelings of loneliness and isolation brought about due to atomization by a government that's operated like a consultancy avoiding any liability or risk.
That maybe so, but those are a lot of different areas to cover. Perhaps specific examples, trends, and/or causes would help support each claim.
For example, how is it the government's fault, in particular? Is it only the government's fault? Are there other contributing factors or trends? It comes across too much like oversimplified scapegoatism rather than a reasoned explanation.
Except these are problems in most modern developed nations, whether they “coddle” their populace or not.
Perhaps our economic system and its focus on efficiency in a race to the bottom, externalities be damned, also bears a small responsibility.
I'm curious which government regulation would cause increased mental illness/loneliness? I mean, I'm sure somewhere it's happening because of gov't, but to say it's the main contributor instead of problems like lack of access to good therapy, cultural shifts in how you talk to people, etc., in my mind seems largely a misplacement of blame.
I completely agree. The amount of pearl clutching happening in this thread is fascinating. It reminds me very much of the 1980’s fundamentalist Christian house I was raised in. Very much like it.
How is society improved by letting 8 year olds gamble?
Would you rather find out your kid has a gambling problem (or addictive personality in general) at 8 or 16?
- Children learn applied mathematic principles earlier, such as odds and optimizations
- Gives children a chance to materially understand the meaning of a dollar
- Allows for demonstrations of propositional logic and formal reasoning