‘Deliberately Provocative’: Meta Under Fire From Parents After Photos Of Daughters Appear
September 21, 2025
Last Updated:September 21, 2025, 13:50 IST
The outrage happened after Meta used “back-to-school pictures of schoolgirls” to advertise the Threads app to a 37-year-old man, who appeared to report it himself.
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Meta used schoolgirls’ photos in targeted ads.
Parents unaware Meta repurposed Instagram posts.
Ads appeared on a 37-year-old man’s device.
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In this AI-generated representative image, a man is shown reacting with shock while viewing social media on his phone. Parents appear concerned and schoolchildren are depicted as neutral, generic figures, illustrating the unsettling nature of posts being repurposed online. (IMAGE: IMAGEN 4/NEWS18)
Meta, the company behind widely used apps including Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads and Facebook, allegedly used back-to-school photos of schoolgirls to promote one of its social media platforms. The ads appeared on the device of a 37-year-old man.
Speaking to the Guardian, the UK-based newspaper that first reported the story, the man said that because he only received promotional posts featuring schoolgirls (which means there were no boys in school uniform) there appeared to be “an aspect of sexualisation.”
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He added that the posts, which encouraged him to “get Threads,” were embedded in his Instagram feed and included images of girls as young as 13. In some cases their faces were visible, and in most cases their names appeared.
The posts of their children were highlighted to the man as “suggested threads”.
According to the Guardian, the images had been posted by parents on Instagram to mark their children’s return to school. The parents said they were unaware that Meta’s settings allowed the company to repurpose these posts for promotional use.
Meta said the images did not violate its policies. The company said it promotes Threads by showing publicly shared photos that follow its community standards and recommendation guidelines. While its systems do not recommend Threads posts made by teenagers, these were shared from adults’ accounts set to public viewing.
A mother told the newspaper that their account was set to private but still somehow the posts were automatically cross-posting to Threads where they were visible.
A man whose 13-year-old daughter appeared in one of the posts said it was “absolutely outrageous”. The newspaper said that the pictures of all the schoolgirls were 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,” the father was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
“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,” said a mother of 15-year-old whose picture was used in a promotional post that featured a large “Get Threads” button.
She said she would never have given consent. “Not for any money in the world would I let them use a girl in a school uniform to drive people onto [its platform],” she was quoted as saying by the UK-based newspaper.
Although her Instagram account has just 267 followers, the post of her child drew nearly 7,000 views, with 90% coming from non-followers. Half of those viewers were over 44 and 90% were men.
Shankhyaneel Sarkar is a senior subeditor at News18. He covers international affairs, where he focuses on breaking news to in-depth analyses. He has over five years of experience during which he has covered sev…Read More
Shankhyaneel Sarkar is a senior subeditor at News18. He covers international affairs, where he focuses on breaking news to in-depth analyses. He has over five years of experience during which he has covered sev… Read More
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