‘Deliberately Provocative’: Meta Under Fire From Parents After Photos Of Daughters Appear In Targeted Ads

Last Updated:September 21, 2025, 13:46 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.

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."

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.

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.

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