Meta Accused of Using Photos of 13-Year-Old Schoolgirls to Promote Threads

Meta is under scrutiny after the company used parents’ photos of schoolgirls as young as 13 to promote its Threads platform to adult men.

According to a report by The Guardian, male Instagram users reported seeing ads to “Get Threads” in their feeds that featured photos of schoolgirls in uniform, with faces and in some cases names visible.

A 37-year-old man from London, who asked not to be named, tells The Guardian: “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.”

The children’s images had originally been shared by parents on Instagram to mark the start of the school year. But because of Meta’s settings, the photos were repurposed in promotional posts without their knowledge.

One mother says her account was private, but that posts were automatically cross-posted to Threads, where they became visible. Another says her picture was shared from a public account. In both cases, the images were highlighted to strangers as “suggested threads.”

One mother says her 15-year-old daughter’s photo, posted to her Instagram account with 267 followers, was suddenly exposed to a far wider audience. The promotional post, which featured a large “Get Threads” button, reached almost 7,000 views — 90% from non-followers, half aged over 44, and 90% men.

“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,” the 15-year-old girl’s mother tells The Guardian.

She adds that she would never have given consent to the photo: “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].”

The father of a 13-year-old whose photo appeared in one of the posts describes Meta’s actions as “absolutely outrageous.” He notes that the images were of schoolgirls in short skirts with bare legs or stockings.

“When I found out an image of her had been exploited in what felt like a sexualized way by a massive company like that to market their product, it left me feeling quite disgusted,” he says.

Meta Says Use of Photos Did Not Break Company Policies

Meta argued that the posts were “recommendation tools” and that public photos could be used in this way. The company tells the news outlet that the images did not break its policies, explaining that it promotes Threads by showing publicly shared photos that meet its community standards and recommendation guidelines. It adds that its systems are designed not to recommend posts made by teenagers, but in these cases, the photos came from adults’ accounts that were set to public.

“The images shared do not violate our policies and are back-to-school photos posted publicly by parents,” a Meta spokesperson tells The Guardian. “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.”

Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.