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Leaked Document on Facebook's Marketing to Teenagers

posted by on Wednesday May 03 2017, @07:42PM   Printer-friendly
from the buy-now! dept.

butthurt writes:

News Corp's news.com.au reports on an internal document leaked from Facebook:

The confidential document dated this year detailed how by monitoring posts, comments and interactions on the site, Facebook can figure out when people as young as 14 feel "defeated", "overwhelmed", "stressed", "anxious", "nervous", "stupid", "silly", "useless", and a "failure".

Such information gathered through a system dubbed sentiment analysis could be used by advertisers to target young Facebook users when they are potentially more vulnerable.

Facebook has apologised and says it will investigate.

The story originally appeared in News Corp's The Australian, where it is pay-walled.

Additional coverage:

Original Submission #1  Original Submission #2 

 
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  • (Score: 2) by inertnet on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:40PM (3 children)

    by inertnet (4071) on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:40PM (#504057) Journal

    No need for "happy", "in love", "victorious" and other positive states of mind?

    That's strange, from my own experience I'm more willing to spend money when I'm feeling happy and/or in love. Not that I would click on ads though...

    Would the FB model also imply that teenagers need to be kept in a vulnerable state as much as possible?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:46PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @11:46PM (#504061)

    It is much harder to wield power over happy people. Stupid policy decisions will be met with resistance, but if the people live in fear and anxiety then you can easily steer them with false promises.

  • (Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:26AM (1 child)

    by tibman (134) Subscriber Badge on Thursday May 04 2017, @01:26AM (#504096)

    Some people stress eat. Maybe there is a group of people that stress buys?

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