A report from advocacy groups Reset Australia Fairplay and the Global Action Plan reveals Facebook is still collecting data from children and youth despite making changes to the way advertisers can reach young people earlier this year.
The social network, which changed its name to Meta this year, said in July that advertisers could no longer target ads to users under the age of 18 based on their interests or activity on other apps and websites.
This change was made in response to concerns raised by youth groups. This means that advertisers are only allowed to target teenagers based solely on their age, gender and location.
In a letter sent to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 46 advocacy groups including Reset Australia, Amnesty International USA and FairPlay have accused Facebook of misleading the public and lawmakers about restricting advertising targeting teenagers.
"While Facebook has said it will no longer allow advertisers to selectively target teenagers, it appears that Facebook itself continues to target teenagers only now using AI (artificial intelligence) systems," the letter reads.
The researchers said they found through their experiments that Facebook's ad serving system still collects data from children and teens. They also describe this AI-based system as a very powerful algorithm capable of predicting which ads each user can interact with.
Facebook may still collect data from children's browser tabs and pages opened, information such as which buttons they clicked, the terms they searched for, and the products they purchased or added to their cart, according to the report.
Meta spokesman Joe Osborne said the company had not seen the report but said Facebook does not use data from the websites and apps of our advertisers and partners to personalize ads to people under 18.
"The reason this information appears in our transparency tool is because teens visit sites or apps that use our business tools. We want to provide transparency on the data we receive, even if it's not used for ad personalization," he said.
The groups are urging Facebook to be more transparent about the impact of changing its ad targeting and ending surveillance marketing to children and youth.
