Meta has used back-to-school pictures of schoolgirls to advertise its Threads platform to a 37-year-old man, sparking outrage among parents. The man noticed promotional posts for Threads appearing in his Instagram feed, featuring embedded images of uniformed girls as young as 13, with their faces and names visible.
The children's images were taken from parents' Instagram posts marking the return to school. Parents were unaware that Meta's settings allowed this use. One mother said her account was set to private, but posts were automatically cross-posted to Threads. Another said she posted to a public account. The posts were highlighted to the stranger as 'suggested threads'.
The father of a 13-year-old girl described the situation as 'absolutely outrageous'. He said: 'When I found out an image of her has been exploited in what felt like a sexualised way by a massive company like that to market their product, it left me feeling quite disgusted.' The mother of a 15-year-old added: 'For me it was a picture of my daughter going to school. I had no idea Instagram had picked it up and are using it as a promotion. It's absolutely disgusting.'
Meta, the $2tn company based in California, said the images did not violate its policies. It stated that it recommends people visit Threads by showing publicly shared photos that comply with its community standards. The company added that its systems do not recommend Threads shared by teenagers, but these posts were made from adults' accounts set to public.
The recipient of the posts, a father from London, said: 'Over several days I was repeatedly served Meta adverts for Threads that exclusively featured parents' images of their daughters in school uniform. To me, showcasing such content as trending or popular feels deliberately provocative and ultimately exploitative of the children and families involved.' Crossbench peer Beeban Kidron commented: 'Offering up school-age girls as bait to advertise a commercial service is a new low even for Meta.'
