Facebook tried its best to cancel

Read this excerpt from “Careless People: A Story of Where I Used to Work”, by Sarah Wynn-Williams (published in South Africa by Pan Macmillan).

- 

By now, it feels like the day-to-day at Facebook is lurching from one dismaying shit show to the next. Mark and Sheryl seem completely removed. Focused on presidential runs or promoting new books or commencement speeches or whatever.

In April 2017, a confidential document is leaked that reveals Facebook is offering advertisers the opportunity to target thirteento-seventeen-year-olds across its platforms, including Instagram, during moments of psychological vulnerability when they feel “worthless”, “insecure”, “stressed”, “defeated”, “anxious”, “stupid”, “useless” and “like a failure”. Or to target them when they're worried about their bodies and thinking of losing weight. Basically, when a teen is in a fragile emotional state.

Facebook’s advertising team had made this presentation for an Australian client that explains that Instagram and Facebook monitor teenagers’ posts, photos, interactions, conversations with friends, visual communications and internet activity on and off Facebook's platforms and use this data to target young people when they're vulnerable. In addition to the moments of vulnerability listed, Facebook finds moments when teenagers are concerned with “body confidence” and “working out and losing weight”.

At first blush it sounds pretty gross, sifting through teens’ private information to identify times when they might be feeling worthless and vulnerable to an advertiser flogging flat-tummy tea or whatever other rubbish.