FB told advertisers it can identify teens feeling 'insecure', 'worthless' (2017)
a year ago
- #advertising
- #privacy
- Facebook can identify teenagers' emotions like 'insecure' and 'worthless' using real-time monitoring of posts and photos.
- The company has a database of 1.9 million high schoolers, 1.5 million tertiary students, and 3 million young workers.
- Facebook gathers psychological insights on young users, including mood shifts, based on internal data not available to the public.
- The company faced criticism for past research altering users' emotions without consent and provided contradictory statements in response to the leak.
- Facebook initially apologized and promised an investigation but later called the report 'misleading' and denied targeting based on emotional states.
- Advertisers can access data on users' relationship status, location, friend count, and site access frequency, as well as topics like body confidence.
- Facebook analyzes how emotions are communicated visually and varies by day, with anticipatory emotions early in the week and reflective emotions on weekends.
- The revelations follow a 2014 backlash over Facebook's 'emotional contagion' experiment manipulating users' home pages.
- Facebook stated the recent research was based on anonymous, aggregated data and did not follow its review process.