Google and Meta made a secret deal to target advertisements for Instagram to teenagers on YouTube, skirting the search company's own rules for how minors are treated online.
According to documents seen by the Financial Times and people familiar with the matter, Google worked on a marketing project for Meta that was designed to target 13- to 17-year-old YouTube users with adverts that promoted its rival's photo and video app.
[...] The companies worked with Spark Foundry, a US subsidiary of French advertising giant Publicis, to launch the pilot marketing program in Canada between February and April this year, according to the people and documents seen by the Financial Times.
Due to its perceived success, it was then trialed in the US in May. The companies had planned to expand it further, to international markets and to promote other Meta apps such as Facebook, people familiar with the matter said.
[...] When contacted by the FT, Google initiated an investigation into the allegations. The project has now been canceled, a person familiar with the decision said.
Google said: "We prohibit ads being personalized to people under-18, period. These policies go well beyond what is required and are supported by technical safeguards. We've confirmed that these safeguards worked properly here" because no registered YouTube users known to be under 18 were directly targeted by the company.
However, Google did not deny using the "unknown" loophole, adding: "We'll also be taking additional action to reinforce with sales representatives that they must not help advertisers or agencies run campaigns attempting to work around our policies."
[...] "We've been open about marketing our apps to young people as a place for them to connect with friends, find community, and discover their interests," Meta said.
Spark Foundry did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
[...] Meta has long faced scrutiny for its policies on minors. It is being sued by 33 states accusing it of deploying 'manipulative' practices toward young users, which it denies. Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission is also seeking to ban Meta from making money from teen audiences as part of an update to an existing privacy settlement, which the company is challenging in court.
[...] Spark was working on behalf of the Meta marketing data science team and was tasked with getting more "Gen Z" customers to download Instagram, which has been losing users to rival apps, in particular TikTok, internal documents show.
[...] On its website, Google says the "unknown" group "refers to people whose age, gender, parental status or household income we haven't identified." But staff at the Internet group had thousands of data points on everything from users' location via phone masts to their app downloads and activity online. This allowed them to determine with a high degree of confidence that those in the "unknown" group included many younger users, in particular under-18s.
Turning off other age groups for which they had demographic data left only the unknown group, with its high proportion of minors and children: it was described as a way of "hacking" the audience safeguards in their system, one of the people said.
[...] During the pitching process, another email from Spark in late 2023 asked Google to provide Meta with "platform-specific data and insights into teen behavior." This would "enable us to tailor and refine our media tactics, messaging and creative execution," it read.
As part of its pitch, Google also boasted of its "really impressive" usage by 13- to 17-year-olds, handily outstripping daily engagement on TikTok and Instagram, documents show.
Google won the mandate from Spark, and the teams on both sides took precautions, banning any direct reference to the age range in writing, one of the people said. Staff used euphemisms in presentations, such as slides with only the words "embrace the unknown," according to documents reviewed by the FT.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Friday August 09 2024, @09:26PM (2 children)
can't be trusted to regulate themselves. Why gee, color me surprised.
Also, Google and Facebook working together... What a fine bunch. They go together like a house on fire. And of course, like the disgusting corporations they are, they work on - you guessed it - exploiting children. Because of course they do.
(Score: 3, Touché) by krishnoid on Saturday August 10 2024, @12:57AM (1 child)
At least they're providing a service that people want and letting kids get wider access to the world around them, rather than screwing them outright [variety.com].
(Score: 3, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday August 10 2024, @01:05AM
You mean this service [youtu.be]?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday August 09 2024, @10:56PM (4 children)
... but not surprised.
Both Google and Meta have long since passed the point where they feel that laws do not really apply to them because they are financially and politically more powerful than the organizations that are meant to regulate them so why should they even bother following their own rules if they get in the way of higher profits/power?
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 5, Insightful) by corey on Friday August 09 2024, @11:52PM (2 children)
I’m just glad that there are journalists and others looking into this and bringing it to light. This stuff is always so opaque and it’s never released until some third party journalists ask questions and poke around.
We really need to support them.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 10 2024, @12:18AM (1 child)
> We really need to support them.
I subscribe to the local small city newspaper, although I live in an outer ring suburb. Not cheap, but I chose to afford it for just that reason--they still employ some local investigative reporters and frequently turn up local corruption and other things that powerful & criminal people would rather we not know.
The paper is a fraction of the size it used to be when I was a teen-aged paper carrier, but they still get a copy into my paper-tube nearly every morning (next to mailbox, at the end of the driveway).
(Score: 3, Insightful) by corey on Sunday August 11 2024, @12:06AM
Cool. Yeah I currently don’t subscribe to any, however I’d be happy to. Just find that so many media organisations are biased in some way. I read the Guardian a fair bit because they have local news to Australia sms aren’t so sensationalist with clickbait links like ABC News. However they are quite left leaning, very pro Palestine, etc. They always ask me to subscribe and support their journalists. There’s also Crikey and Michael West.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by krishnoid on Saturday August 10 2024, @01:14AM
Not just financially and politically -- there are lots of social media sites, but Google globally provides so many free services like docs, chat, mail (and spam filtering) that they're close to infrastructural. When there's a disruption of those services, *everybody* is affected.
Hell, the Crowdstrike outage [reuters.com] was enough to get the government's attention, and Huawei routers [yahoo.com] are a national security issue, and I doubt much of the unwashed masses have heard of those two companies.