Someone questioning the moral implications of manipulating individuals' emotions for personal gain.
Freshened-up Article:
Sarah Wynn-Williams, a former policy director at Facebook who penned the tell-all book Careless People, recently shared her shocking revelations about Facebook's practices at a congressional hearing. Accusations centered around the company's use of emotional data from teenagers to target them with ads.
'You know what advertisers want? They want your mood,' Wynn-Williams spilled during the hearing, primarily focused on Meta's alleged undermining of national security and data leaks to China. 'When you're feeling down, you're more likely to buy something. So, what Facebook was doing was basically telling advertisers that those teenagers are upset – prime time to serve them an ad. If a teenage girl deletes a selfie, perfect opportunity to push beauty products,' she added.
Now, is it ever ethical to target users emotionally for advertising purposes?
Clear and Transparent Consent
Darren Woolley, founder and global CEO at Trinity P3, believes that behavioral targeting can be ethical under the right circumstances. However, he stresses that it's crucial for users to have a clear understanding of what they're giving consent to.
'Plain and simple: users should know exactly what they're consenting to,' Woolley stressed. 'Not a hundred pages of legal jargon. Detailed explanations, specific examples. That's informed consent.'
Even if Meta's users approved such practices, many were under the age of 18. Woolley explained, 'In most countries, minors can't give informed consent. Only their parents can.'
Advertising's Silence
Advertisers and agencies have remained conspicuously quiet in response to Wynn-Williams' claims. Woolley attributes this to Meta's perceived invincibility.
'No one dares to speak out against Meta,' he asserted. 'Either they're scared or stand to gain from the status quo. A group of advertisers once aimed to improve brand safety, but Elon Musk threatened a lawsuit. Now, agencies reportedly offer incentives to advertise for Meta, supporting a merger.'
Woolley emphasized the need for transparency, transparent consent processes, and robust age verification systems in behavioral targeting to ensure ethical marketing practices.
Photograph by Karla Rivera
Enrichment Insights:
Behavioural targeting, where social media platforms collect user data to display personalized ads, is generally considered ethical as long as users have given informed consent[4][5][1]. Informed consent requires transparency and a clear understanding of how data will be used. Minors under 18, however, may not possess the maturity to provide informed consent, and enforcement can be inconsistent. Regulations like GDPR, CCPA, and COPPA serve to protect consumers, with stricter rules for minors. Agencies should prioritize transparency and age verification systems in advertising practices.
Adult users should be well-informed about how their data is being used in behavioral targeting, and minors under 18 require explicit parental consent.
Advertisers often remain silent on controversial topics like behavioral targeting due to fear, vested interests, or the perceived power of large platforms like Meta.
- The ethical use of behavioral targeting, which involves the display of personalized ads based on user data collected by social media platforms, relies on informed consent from the users.
- Informed consent mandates transparency and a clear understanding of how data will be utilized, as emphasized by Darren Woolley, founder and global CEO at Trinity P3.
- The technology and fashion-and-beauty sectors, driven by advertising, could particularly benefit from behaving ethically, ensuring their ads are not targeting users emotionally in an exploitive manner, as suggested by Sarah Wynn-Williams' testimony.
- The media landscape, encompassing general-news, entertainment, and social-media, would benefit from more open discussions about data privacy and advertising practices, given the ongoing silence from advertisers on controversial topics like behavioral targeting.
- Politics, as a field closely tied to media, would also profit from greater transparency in data usage, as questionable practices could potentially influence voter sentiment and decision-making, raising concerns about the integrity of democratic processes.
