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Facebook has denied it offers\u00a0tools to\u00a0advertisers to target users when they are in vulnerable emotional states.<\/p>\n
Yesterday The Australian<\/a>\u00a0published a report claiming Facebook uses algorithms to target advertising when users of its service are feeling insecure \u2014 including targeting children as young as 14 when they are feeling vulnerable.<\/p>\n The report, based on a confidential 2017 internal document seen by the newspaper, claimed\u00a0that by\u00a0monitoring posts, pictures, interactions and Internet activity in real-time Facebook\u2019s algorithms can\u00a0identify \u201cmoments when young people need a confidence boost\u201d.<\/p>\n Facebook can determine\u00a0when young people feel \u201cstressed\u201d, \u201cdefeated\u201d, \u201coverwhelmed\u201d, \u201canxious\u201d, \u201cnervous\u201d, \u201cstupid\u201d, \u201csilly\u201d, \u201cuseless\u201d, and a \u201cfailure\u201d, the report claimed, suggesting\u00a0the company allows\u00a0advertisers to target users based on its algorithmic\u00a0understanding of their well-being.<\/p>\n Detailed information on mood shifts among young people is \u201cshareable under non-disclosure agreement only\u201d, the document\u00a0added.<\/p>\n Contacted by TechCrunch about the newspaper\u2019s claims a Facebook spokesperson described the report\u00a0as \u201cmisleading\u201d ,\u00a0and denied the company provides tools for advertisers to target Facebook\u00a0users based on their emotional state.<\/p>\n \u201cThe premise of this article is misleading. We do not offer tools to target people based on their emotional state. The analysis done by an Australian researcher was intended to help marketers understand how people express themselves on Facebook. It was never used to target ads and was based on data that was anonymous and aggregated,\u201d the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n However Facebook\u00a0is\u00a0not denying the existence of the\u00a0document, nor its apparent ability to assess users\u2019 psychological states based on ongoing tracking of their online activity.<\/p>\n In\u00a0earlier comments\u00a0to the newspaper Facebook also apologized, and said it had opened\u00a0an investigation to \u201cunderstand the process failure and improve our oversight\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe will undertake disciplinary and other processes as appropriate,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n Facebook has an established process for reviewing internal research, and TechCrunch understands\u00a0the research\u00a0in question did not follow that process \u2014 hence the internal\u00a0review.<\/p>\n It\u2019s by no means\u00a0the first time questions have been raised about Facebook\u2019s approach to the emotional well-being of its users.\u00a0The company got into ethical hot water back in 2014<\/a>\u00a0when it emerged it\u00a0had experimented on\u00a0some 700,000 users without their consent or knowledge, to see whether it could influence\u00a0how they\u00a0felt.<\/p>\n Facebook\u2019s\u00a0exercise in mass emotional manipulation, which was actually carried out in 2012, involved it\u00a0showing users\u00a0either more positive or more negative content to see if it could influence their\u00a0mood. When details of the\u00a0internal experiment emerged it was roundly condemned as unethical<\/a>.<\/p>\n Last fall<\/a>\u00a0the company\u00a0also garnered criticism for its ad targeting practices after it emerged it was allowing ads to be targeted based on users\u2019 ethnic affinity \u2014 with concerns this could enable\u00a0discriminatory advertising. Facebook\u00a0subsequently<\/a> disabled ethnic affinity targeting\u00a0for housing, employment and credit-related ads.<\/p>\n And while the social media giant\u00a0has\u00a0distanced itself from these latest suggestions it\u2019s tracking users emotions for marketing-related sales opportunities, a\u00a0longitudinal study of Facebook usage<\/a>,\u00a0conducted by external researchers and\u00a0published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in February, claims to have found\u00a0an association between\u00a0activity on the social network and negative feelings of well-being.<\/p>\n \u201cThe negative associations of Facebook use were comparable to or greater in magnitude than the positive impact of offline interactions, which suggests a possible tradeoff between offline and online relationships,\u201d the researchers wrote\u00a0in the abstract<\/a> to the paper.<\/p>\n More recently, Facebook\u00a0has also been accused of allowing data on millions of its users to be covertly harvested by a Trump campaign affiliate<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 and potentially used\u00a0to target political advertising at Americans ahead of the 2016 Presidential election. Although it has refuted these claims, telling the Intercept<\/a>\u00a0in March: \u201cOur investigation to date has not uncovered anything that suggests wrongdoing.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/Fmm9OrHO0yo\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Facebook has denied it offers\u00a0tools to\u00a0advertisers to target users when they are in vulnerable emotional states. Yesterday The Australian\u00a0published a report claiming Facebook uses algorithms to target advertising when users <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-5107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t