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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Technology
Robert Booth UK technology editor

Parents outraged as Meta uses photos of schoolgirls in ads targeting man

School girls in uniform walk along a corridor (file photo).
The mother whose Instagram picture of her 15-year-old daughter was used in a post advertising Threads said she had ‘no idea’ it would be used as a promotion. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA

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.

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