An internal document confirmed as being real by Facebook Inc. is alleged to show that the social networking giant is exploiting young people as young as 14 in Australia by allowing advertisers to target them when they are at their most vulnerable.

Obtained by The Australian, the 23-page Facebook document, dated 2017 and marked “Confidential: Internal Only” is alleged to outline how advertisers can target “moments when young people need a confidence boost” including when they feel “worthless” and “insecure.” The document apparently details how Facebook can monitor posts, pictures, interactions and Internet activity to work out when young people feel “stressed,” “defeated,” “overwhelmed,” “anxious,” “nervous,” “stupid,” “silly,” “useless” and a “failure.”

According to the report, the document was prepared by Facebook’s top Australian executives, David Fernandez and Andy Sinn, and was put together as part of a pitch to a major Australia bank. The data in the document is said to include information “based on internal Facebook data” and claims that Facebook has gathered psychological insights on 6.4 million “high schoolers,” “tertiary students” and “young Australians and New Zealanders … in the workforce” to sell targeted advertising.

Facebook has confirmed that the document is real. However, it told marketing publication Mumbrella that the research had been developed to understand how people express themselves on the social media platform rather than as a means to target people when they are in a vulnerable state.

“The premise of the article is misleading,” a Facebook spokesman said. “Facebook does not offer tools to target people based on their emotional state. The analysis done by an Australian researcher was intended to help marketers understand how people express themselves on Facebook. It was never used to target ads and was based on data that was anonymous and aggregated.”

Nonetheless, the company also told The Australian that the research was produced outside the company’s normal procedures: “We have opened an investigation to understand the process failure and improve our oversight. We will undertake disciplinary and other processes as appropriate.”

While the truth often lies somewhere in between, there’s no question that the research was presented to a large bank as part of an advertising pitch by the social networking giant. That said, at its core, Facebook is a company that trades primarily on its data-gathering to sell advertising, so the fact that it’s compiling data on underage users is not surprising either, even if the fact it does raises moral and possibly legal concerns.

Photo: Sport the library/Wikimedia Commons