Reportedly via a loophole in Google’s advertising rules.

Meta and Google teamed up to run a secret campaign that deliberately targeted 13 to 17-year-olds with Instagram ads on YouTube according to the Financial Times, breaking the search giant’s own rules against advertising to children.

The publication reports that Google directed ads to a subset of users labeled as “unknown” in its advertising systems, in an attempt to disguise the group skewed toward teenagers. According to a Google Ads help page, the “unknown” demographic category refers to people whose age, gender, parental status, or household income are supposedly unidentified, and can allow advertisers to reach “a significantly wider audience” when selected.

  • Empricorn@feddit.nlEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    That’s illegal… right? Can we start actually holding companies responsible with meaningful fines and jail-time for the executives breaking our laws with impunity??

    • BertramDitore@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      The justice system doesn’t apply to corporations, even though they’re people. And since the corporations are run by billionaires, the most peopliest people there are, the justice system definitely doesn’t apply to them. Money = speech, and these corporations have the most money, therefore they get the most speech, meaning they have more rights than us normal people, and can get away with breaking the same laws that would get any of us thrown in jail.

      /s but not really…

  • paraphrand@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    lol. They know so much about us that “unknown” is just the ones they legally shouldn’t be tracking 🤣.

    • brsrklf@jlai.luEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      "See, on this diagram, that part of the global population represents the users we can legally identify, because they’re not minors.

      _ So, who’s in the rest of the diagram?..

      _ This is a mystery to everybody."

  • peregrinete@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    Is that really a surprise? These big companies have always preyed on children and minors because they are vulnerable. It’s all about money and not laws, morals or ethics