In Europeaccording to the countries, between August And September Students return to the desks for the start of the new school year. An intense and exciting moment that does not only involve girls, boys and teachers, but also parents. Many, proud of their children, publish on social network the photo Of this return, full of hopes and expectations. Even if sharing the Images Of minors on social platforms it is considered at least inappropriatemany do it without worrying about potential consequences, legal and non -legal.
Well, the photos of the Return to school of the students – and, in particular, of the students – would have been used by Half to advertise Threadsthe recent social network created by the Instagram team (400 million active users monthly in mid -2025) which is proposed as an alternative to Xthe late Twitter “suppressed” by Elon Musk. Photos of these minor studentsin fact, would have ended up in the Instagram feed of a 37 -year -old man To encourage him to register for Threads.
To tell the story, the authoritative British newspaper The Guardian, who reported the statements of the thirty -seven -year -old, of the parents of the students immortalized and destination. The man claimed to have received only promotional photos of the girls in the Instagram feed with theschool uniform And not of students, thus suspecting a “sexualizing” reason. “For several days I was repeatedly shown to me destination for threads that showed exclusively images of parents who portrayed their daughters in school uniform, some of which revealed their name. As a father, I find deeply inappropriate What a destination to reuse these posts for a targeted promotion to adults, “said the 37 -year -old, who wanted to remain anonymous.
Meta re -educates his chatbots to ban conversations on suicide with minors: “It was a mistake”
Parents who discovered the use of photos of their daughters for promotional purposes to push Threads said “upset” and who would not have never given consentif they had known of such an eventuality. The father of a thirteen year old, for example, defined the story “absolutely scandalous”, Feeling disgusted for exploitation “apparently sexualAnd ”of the photos of his daughter by a great company as a destination. A fifteen -year -old’s mother also said he was disgusted for the promotional use of the image of the daughter.
A spokesman for the goal, responding to the criticisms, declared the following to the Guardian: “The shared images do not violate our policies And they are photos of the return to school publicly shared from parents. We have implemented systems to make sure not to advise threads shared by teenagers Or that violate our guidelines for recommendations, and users can check if Meta suggests their public posts on Instagram. “This, of course, still mussels with theopportunity to use the aforementioned images to entice adult men to enroll in a social network, while not violating any policy (the photos were uploaded to adult profiles and public yields).
When uploading photos to social networks, including minors, the company generally grants the non -exclusive licensetransferable and worldwide of the material, based on the terms of service that are subscribed. And what do the large company owners of social networks do it? Generally they do not resell them, but for example they can use them to show the content to other people, share them with commercial partners and promote the social platform. In more recent times they have also been involved in the processes for train artificial intelligence (for those who oppose it is possible to fill in modules to deny consent). In this case, in case, however, the contents of minors are not used.
The photos with minors published by adults, although much more delicate, basically present the same license to use the photos of a holiday, an animal or perhaps an astronomical phenomenon. Therefore, they must always be set Privacy restrictions To prevent the exploitation of the images, even more so those of children and kids, who would be appropriate to never share, as explained by the lawyer Guido Scorza.
