Inside Story: Facebook’s foul underbelly and how it cashes in on kids
Inside the global scoop, Facebook’s astonishing attempt to kill the story and why it is still reverberating all these years on.
We were getting close. After becoming media editor in 2015, I had written many news stories about the growing and insidious power of tech platforms – especially Facebook.
I had spoken to countless people involved in this vast and complex ecosystem: advertisers, their agencies, CEOs of publishing companies of all sizes, government ministers, politicians, regulators and investors.
The work of investigating, identifying angles and leads, tracking people down and interviewing them became a constant source of weekly stories in the Media section of The Australian.
Rumours about Facebook’s advertising business – now generating more than $US160bn ($254bn) a year – had long circulated in industry circles, but until 2017 there was no concrete evidence of seriously questionable practices.
Whenever I picked up the phone or met a media agency CEO or advertiser for coffee and asked about these rumours, the mood would shift – they’d change the subject or shift uncomfortably in their seat. Eventually, though, I found someone who promised to share confidential internal Facebook documents that might shine a light on what had been whispered for years.
I got more than I bargained for. As I flicked through one batch of documents, I uncovered evidence that Facebook was offering generous rebates to media agencies based on the number of staff they employed, sweetening ad deals with all-expenses-paid trips to the United States.
Rebates are common in the media industry, but proof of their existence raises critical questions: Were media agencies being incentivised to steer client spending towards Facebook – even when it might not be in the advertiser’s best interests?
But the real bombshell was buried at the back of the documents. To my astonishment, Facebook was boasting to media agencies that it could target children at their most vulnerable – including when they felt “worthless” and “insecure”.
A 23-page Facebook document, marked “Confidential: Internal Only” and dated 2017, outlined in chilling detail how the platform could identify “moments when young people need a confidence boost”.
By monitoring posts, pictures, interactions and other online activity in real-time, Facebook claimed it could detect when young people felt “stressed”, “defeated”, “overwhelmed”, “anxious”, “nervous”, “stupid”, “silly”, “useless” and like a “failure”.
That 2017 report in The Australian resurfaced this week when whistleblower Sarah Wynn-Williams outlined further disturbing details about Meta’s internal strategies before a US Senate judiciary committee.
Her testimony came as Facebook’s parent company, Meta, accused the Australian government of “rushing” to enforce a social media ban for children under 16 without “properly considering the evidence”, arguing that it and other platforms already “ensure age-appropriate experiences”.
But Wynn-Williams says Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg cannot be trusted. In her book, she reveals she was dispatched by Facebook’s top executives to kill my story.
“It’s a reporter for an Australian newspaper who’s gotten his hands on one of the internal documents about how Facebook actually does this, and he reaches out for comment from Facebook before publishing. That’s when I hear about it. I didn’t know anything about this and neither did the policy team in Australia,” she writes.
“It’s an advertising thing. I’m put on a response team – communications specialists, members from the privacy and measurement teams, and safety policy specialists – all trying to figure out what to say publicly.
“We discuss the possibility that this news might trigger investigations by state attorneys or the Federal Trade Commission, because it could become public that Facebook commercialises and exploits its youngest users.”
It doesn’t escape Wynn-Williams’ attention that years later, British teenager Molly Russell saved Instagram posts – including one from an account called Feeling Worthless – before taking her own life. Instagram and WhatsApp are both owned by Meta.
The word “worthless” was one of the emotional triggers we exposed in our original report on the insidious ways Facebook’s algorithm was being harnessed.
Wynn-Williams continues: “The initial statement Facebook gives the Australian journalist who uncovered the targeting and surveillance back in 2017 doesn’t acknowledge that this sort of ad targeting is commonplace at Facebook. In fact, it pretends the opposite.”
The Australian published Facebook’s full statement. On the morning of publication, the story ignited a firestorm of bad publicity and marked the first time Facebook had publicly apologised.
Our story prompted Australia’s Children’s e-Safety Commissioner to contact Facebook. It was picked up by more than 50 major media outlets worldwide. That morning, I was inundated with calls from international media requesting TV and radio appearances to discuss the story.
Among those contacting me were two Australian journalists – one from the ABC and another from Fairfax Media – who tipped me off that Facebook’s local communications team was calling reporters to smear me with personal attacks, a tactic aimed at discouraging others from pursuing the story.
The lengths they went to shut it down were staggering. Wynn-Williams writes that a junior researcher in Australia was fired.
“Even though that poor researcher was most likely just doing what her bosses wanted. She’s just another nameless young woman who was treated as cannon fodder by the company,” she writes.
When Facebook’s attempts to deter us failed and we published follow-up stories, Wynn-Williams reveals that the company – and Sheryl Sandberg, then second in command and a close confidant of Zuckerberg – escalated their efforts to contain the growing media interest.
“Elliot says, ‘We need to push back hard on the idea that advertisers were enabled to target based on emotions. Can you share to group so Sheryl et al can i) see the article, ii) understand next steps.’ Joel wants a new, firmer statement, insisting, ‘We’ve never delivered ads targeted on emotion.’
“He directs that ‘our comms should swat that down clearly’. But he’s told that’s not possible. Joel responds, ‘We can’t confirm that we don’t target on the basis of insecurity or how someone is feeling?’
“Facebook’s deputy chief privacy officer replies, ‘That’s correct, unfortunately.’ Elliot then asks whether it’s possible to target ads using terms like ‘depressed’, and the deputy confirms that, yes, Facebook could customise that for advertisers. Despite all this, Elliot, Joel, and several of Facebook’s most senior executives conspired on a cover-up. Facebook issued a second statement that was a flat-out lie: ‘Facebook does not offer tools to target people based on their emotional state’.’’
The statement was circulated among the senior leadership. Many of them knew it was false. They approved it anyway.
“On May 1, 2017, The Australian posted a story regarding research done by Facebook and subsequently shared with an advertiser. The premise of the article is misleading. Facebook does not offer tools to target people based on their emotional state,” the statement read. “The analysis done by an Australian researcher was intended to help marketers understand how people express themselves on Facebook. It was never used to target ads and was based on data that was anonymous and aggregated.”
Facebook’s conduct strikes at the core of one of today’s most urgent societal challenges. Whether or not they’ve read US psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation, most Australian parents and teachers recognise what’s gone wrong: social media has reshaped childhood – and not for the better. The result has been a dramatic decline in the mental health and wellbeing of children and teenagers.
That’s why Anthony Albanese’s push to introduce minimum age restrictions for social media is likely to resonate strongly in the federal election. This move isn’t just timely – it’s critical.
It represents a major test of the government’s willingness to act in the national interest and take on tech giants like Facebook.
As Haidt told The Australian’s Paul Kelly in March, we’ve entered “the phone-based childhood” – a shift that effectively marked the end of the “play-based childhood”.
But parents can’t fight this alone. It’s time for governments to step up and take on the legal and legislative heavy lifting.
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