Tech

Facebook is reducing targeted advertising for people under 18, without giving it up entirely

Facebook has presented new measures to strengthen the protection of minors on its services. Among the measures taken, the social network announces a restriction on advertising targeted to minors.

From now on, minors who visit Facebook will experience much less targeted advertising on the social network. This will be significantly restricted in the coming weeks for those under 18 (or over, depending on the legislation of the countries) who have an account on the community site and, where applicable, when they are also on the group’s subsidiaries. , like Instagram and Messenger.

The announcement made by Facebook on July 27 is part of a list of measures to increase the protection of children on the platform. For example, the accounts of people under 16 and newly registered will default to private. For those who already have a profile, incentives to pass it privately will be displayed, but this will remain optional.

Another angle of action evoked by the American company, the development of a mechanism supposed to prevent suspicious accounts (in this category fall for example the accounts belonging to adults which may have been recently blocked or reported by a minor) of interacting with other accounts owned by young people, and making them less accessible.

Facebook
Facebook presents new measures to strengthen the protection of minors on its services. Besides a restriction on targeted advertising, other actions are taken. // Source: Facebook

More than three criteria announced for the advertisement

With regard to targeted advertising specifically, it will be reduced to three basic criteria based on age, gender and geographic position. All the other options that were previously available to advertisers – and which remain valid for adults – are going to be withdrawn soon. These criteria include interests and activity on other apps and websites.

In fact, Facebook does not renounce neither advertising for minors nor a minimum of targeted advertising for this audience since, in fact, the social network maintains selection criteria which are based on individual characteristics (where such and such is located Internet user? Is it a man or a woman? How old is it?). Facebook specifies that this new framework will be applied worldwide.

teenage child
Three criteria are still retained to target minors: age, gender and location. // Source: Marco Verch

Youth advocates told us that young people may not be well equipped to make these decisions [être capable de dire s’ils préfèrent ne pas voir de publicités ciblées, NDLR]. We agree with them, which is why we are taking a more careful approach to how advertisers can reach young people with ads. », Explains the site.

However, once the 18-year anniversary has passed, Facebook’s targeted advertising will redeploy completely. At that time, minors becoming adults will be ” informed of the targeting options advertisers can now use to reach them and the tools we provide them to monitor their advertising experience “.

Advertising remains at the heart of the Facebook business model. This is where the social network derives almost all of its income, much more, for example, than Google, which is also very dependent on this sector. If these data are a little dated, because they date from 2017, they nevertheless give an enlightening order of magnitude: 97% of Facebook’s revenues came from advertisers.

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