Former Facebook executive says the company allows advertisers to target children when they are vulnerable

A US Senate hearing has heard how Facebook notifies advertisers when it is a “really good time” to target children when they are feeling “worthless”.

Facebook uses the “unfathomable” amount of off-platform data it collects from children to help advertisers target them at their most vulnerable, a former executive has claimed, saying many of the company’s staff don’t allow their own kids to use social media because they know the harm it causes.

Facebook’s former director of global public policy Sarah Wynn-Williams told a US senate committee hearing the company intentionally prioritised profits over the wellbeing and safety of kids.

Defying a gag order from Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, the whistleblower described how the platforms would use off-platform data, like a teenage girl deleting a selfie from her photo app, to notify advertisers it was a “really good time” to try sell her a beauty product.

Sarah Wynn-Williams, former Director of Global Public Policy at Facebook, testifies during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill. Picture: Getty Images via AFP

“Facebook was targeting 13 to 17 year olds. It could identify when they were feeling worthless or helpless or like a failure, and they would take that information and share it with advertisers,” she said.

“One of the things about advertising is advertisers understand that when people don’t feel good about themselves, it’s often a good time to pitch a product, people are more likely to buy something.

“And so what the company was doing was letting these advertisers know that these 13 to 17 year olds were feeling depressed and saying, now’s a really good time to serve them an advertisement.”

Sarah Wynn-Williams said Facebook intentionally prioritised profits over the wellbeing and safety of kids. Picture: AP

Senator Marsha Blackburn slammed the “disgusting” business model, describing it as “kicking kids when they’re down”.

Meta is one of dozens of tech companies now taking part in an Age Assurance Technology Trial sparked amid News Corp Australia’s Let Them Be Kids series which campaigned for children under 16 to be banned from social media.

New Zealand-born whistle blower Ms Wynn-Williams worked for Facebook from 2011 to 2017 and last month released a best-selling book about her time at the company titled Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed and Lost Idealism.

Asked about evidence from her book and other whistleblowers that Mr Zuckerberg and his executives would veto recommendations on how to protect children online, Ms Wynn-Williams agreed that did happen.

“Yes, Senator, and as a mother of three children, that’s one of the more difficult aspects to reconcile with this company, that it is not a company that looks after users, particularly those 13 to 17, which they regard as vulnerable yet very valuable,” she said.

“They know the harm that this product does.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn slammed the “disgusting” business model, describing it as “kicking kids when they’re down”. Picture: AP

She said when she moved to Silicon Valley she was shocked to find it was a place where parents banned screen time in favour of Montesorri wooden toys.

“They don’t allow their own teenagers to use the products that Meta develops,” she said.

“The hypocrisy is at every level.”

Ms Wynn Williams recalled an “extraordinary” conversation in which she told senior staff the trillion dollar company “doesn’t need to do this” and they boasted that they should be celebrating having a captive teenage audience advertisers wanted to speak to.

Ms Wynn Williams warned it was “unfathomable” how much data the company collected from its users and went well beyond their private messages and on-platform information.

“It’s very, very hard to wrap your mind around the amount of data that this company has on each person who logs on to its service,” she said.

The whistleblower said work done by Meta employees to build censorship programs in an attempt to infiltrate China’s market was an example of how the company had the ability to develop tools to better protect children but chose not to.

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Picture: AFP

She said during her time at the company, it had undermined America’s national security by working hand in glove with the Chinese government, building censorship tools, giving Beijing access to the data of American users and helping it develop AI capabilities.

She claimed there was a years-long “secret mission” by Mr Zuckerberg and his staff working closely with senior members of the Communist Party to infiltrate the Chinese market in what one committee member described as “selling out America to China and imperilling our national security for a buck”.

“Throughout those seven years, I saw Meta executives repeatedly undermine US national security and betray American values,” Ms Wynn-Williams told the Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism.

“They did these things in secret to win favour with Beijing and build an $18 billion business in China.

“We are engaged in a high stakes AI arms race against China. And during my time at Meta, company executives lied about what they were doing with the Chinese Communist Party to employees, shareholders, Congress and the American public.”

Meta has refuted her evidence, describing it as “divorced from reality and riddled with false claims” and saying it did not operate in China today.

Ms Wynn Williams said the company had damaged the news media to drive its own profits and during discussion on ways to promote a healthy news market, Mr Zuckerberg said: “You’re compromising with a dying industry rather than dominating it, crushing it.”

She said the company would do whatever it took to keep people glued to the service and in their thrall.

Originally published as Former Facebook executive says the company allows advertisers to target children when they are vulnerable