Meta has used back-to-school pictures of schoolgirls to advertise one of its social media platforms to a 37-year-old man, in a move parents described as “outrageous” and “upsetting”.
The man noticed that posts encouraging him to “get Threads”, Mark Zuckerberg’s rival to Elon Musk’s X, were being dropped into his Instagram feed featuring embedded posts of uniformed girls as young as 13 with their faces visible and, in most cases, their names.
The children’s images were used by Meta after their parents had posted them on Instagram to mark their return to school. The parents were unaware that Meta’s settings permitted it to do this. One mother said her account was set to private, but the posts were automatically cross-posting to Threads where they were visible. Another said she posted the picture to a public Instagram account. The posts of their children were highlighted to the stranger as “suggested threads”.
The recipient told the Guardian the posts felt “deliberately provocative and ultimately exploitative of the children and families involved”.
The father of a 13-year-old who appeared in one of the posts said it was “absolutely outrageous”. The images were all of schoolgirls in short skirts with either bare legs or stockings.
“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,” he said.
Meta, the $2tn (£1.5tn) company based in Menlo Park, California, said the images did not violate its policies. It said it recommended people to visit Threads by showing them publicly shared photos that comply with its community standards and recommendation guidelines. Its systems do not recommend Threads shared by teenagers, but these were posts made from adults’ accounts that were set to allow public viewing.
The man who received the posts said that as he was only sent promotional posts of schoolgirls – there were no boys in school uniform, for example – there appeared to be “an aspect of sexualisation”.
The mother of a 15-year-old whose picture was used in a promotional post that featured a large “Get Threads” button said: “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. She is a minor.”
She said she would have refused consent and “not for any money in the world would I let them use a girl dressed in a school uniform to get people on to [its platform]”.
With 267 followers, her Instagram account usually had modest reach but the post of her child attracted nearly 7,000 views, 90% from non-followers, half of whom were aged over 44 and 90% of whom were men.
Another mother whose post of her 13-year-old was used in a promotional post said: “Meta did all of this on purpose, not informing us, as they want to generate content. It’s despicable. And who is responsible for creating that Threads ad using children’s photos to promote the platform for older men?”
Meta said it called such posts “recommendation tools” and that public postscould be used for this purpose.
A company spokesperson said: “The images shared do not violate our policies and are back-to-school photos posted publicly by parents. We have systems in place to help make sure we don’t recommend Threads shared by teens, or that go against our recommendation guidelines, and users can control whether Meta suggests their public posts on Instagram.”
The 37-year-old Instagram user from London who received the posts and asked to remain anonymous said: “Over several days I was repeatedly served Meta adverts for Threads that exclusively featured parents’ images of their daughters in school uniform, some revealing their names. As a father, I find it deeply inappropriate for Meta to repurpose these posts in targeted promotion to adults.”
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He said he had not posted or liked any similar images before he was sent the schoolgirl pictures.
“To me, showcasing such content as trending or popular feels deliberately provocative and ultimately exploitative of the children and families involved, putting their online safety at risk.”
Beeban Kidron, a crossbench peer and campaigner for children’s rights online, said: “Offering up school-age girls as bait to advertise a commercial service is a new low even for Meta.
“At every opportunity Meta privileges profit over safety, and company growth over children’s right to privacy. It is the only reason that they could think it appropriate to send pictures of schoolgirls to a 37-year-old man – as bait – Meta is a wilfully careless company.”
She called on the regulator Ofcom to consider if measures, introduced this summer to prevent unknown adults connecting to children, make clear that “companies cannot offer sexualised images of children as bait to unknown men”.
Ofcom’s illegal harms codes intended to tackle online grooming require that “children’s profiles and locations – as well as friends and connections – should not be visible to other users”.
Meta’s system means that if a Threads profile is public, posts on adult profiles may be suggested on Facebook or Instagram “so people can discover, follow, and interact with you”. These suggestions can be turned off or the Threads profile can be switched to private.