TEENAGERS ON FACEBOOK can be exploited by advertisements promoting alcohol, marijuana, drinking, obesity, and eating disorders, according to a study by a watchdog organization. The Tech Transparency Project produced six test ads and uploaded them to Facebook, explaining it aimed to target people aged 13 to 17. Facebook accepted all the advertisements within hours, including one endorsing pill parties in 43 minutes.

“This is a simple patch, and Facebook should have had the foresight to make it a long time ago,” said Tech Transparency Project director Katie Paul. “Whether this was an oversight or a money-grab is not relevant. It’s absolutely unacceptable.”

When you scroll through Facebook and the broader web, the algorithms keep tabs on your activities. Eventually, it positions you into groups based on what it’s learned about you: your political leanings, your favorite songs, your tastes and hobbies, and so on. This is what attracts advertisers, who want to display advertisements targeted to these categories.

But many people are unaware that Facebook will assume anything from their race to their ethnicity or relationship status only from their online behavior. Moreover, some of these categories are unacceptable for minors. The study showed that Facebook used teenagers’ actions to put them in preference groups for “alcoholic beverages,” “extreme weight loss,” and “tobacco,” also mentioning whether the teens were single so they could be targeted by dating site advertisements.
Both Facebook users are grouped in interest groups. But minors under 18 aren’t expected to be included in those adult categories. Facebook has gotten in hot water for advertising inappropriate advertisements to children since at least 2014. As early as 2019, an audit by The Guardian showed that children were already being identified as involved in cigarettes and alcohol.

Reporters have discovered other problems with the company’s algorithmically generated categories. In 2017, a ProPublica study found that the firm was permitting advertisers to approach users who identified their own profession as “jew hunters.” The next year Facebook apologised for indicating that thousands of users in Russia were “interested in treason.” Then, in 2019, Facebook settled with civil rights activists who argued the platform permitted advertisers to discriminate against such groups while uploading advertisements for work and housing.
Facebook has guardrails in order to protect these from being exposed to underage audiences, but TTP’s director says the test advertisements were accepted “in a matter of hours.”

“There’s just no excuse why Facebook should have tagged nearly a million teens as potentially involved in “alcoholic beverages” and other categories,” Paul added. Facebook did not comment until this article was originally written. After the report was released, a spokeswoman said in a tweet, "We're reviewing why any of these infringing advertisements were not identified. We ban advertisements for alcohol, weight loss drugs, and some other issues from being exposed to users under the age of 18 and we have age limitation software so that company can help monitor who sees their content. We also can re-review advertisements after they are live.”

TTP created six test ads, each built around a subject users under 18 aren’t allowed to see. This include an ad for “ana tips” (“ana” is a commonly known abbreviation for anorexia), which TTP says it aimed at people whom Facebook classifies as being involved in “extreme weight loss” and “diet food.” A bogus vape commercial targeted underage people identified as involved in “electronic cigarettes” and “tobacco.” Advertisers aren’t allowed to reach users under 18 with dating site advertising, but TTP’s test ad was accepted after just two hours.

In addition to making the groups, Facebook also gives marketers its “estimated reach,” the number of people who will see each ad after it’s posted. Facebook predicted as many as 900,000 people would see the beer ad, and as many as 5 million would see the dating site ad. Without urgent correction to how the social network monitors its own policies about ad placement, the organization warns, Facebook is “positioned to benefit from harmful ads … targeted at a vulnerable age group.”