An investigation by the media organization The Markup found the pixel by Facebook and Instagram-parent Meta on dozens of popular websites targeting kids from kindergarten to college, including sites that students are all but required to use if they want to participate in school activities or apply to college.
On some level, that’s not a surprise: tracking tools like the pixel are so widespread that intensive tracking is almost the status quo. You could make the argument that these educational sites are “just the same as any other site,” said Marshini Chetty, associate professor of computer science at the University of Chicago.
But dealing with kids raises bigger questions about tracking on the web. “Why is there the Meta Pixel? Why are there session recorders?” she said. “What is the place of that on these sites?”
This is 100% on those sites for Siding FB Pixel.
Stop blaming big tech when the problem is everyone willfully going along with it.
If nobody added Pixel to their sites it used FB’s SDKs on mobile they wouldn’t have any of this data.
Big “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” energy.
Facebook has the resources and personnel to maintain basic ethical standards for whom they sell their products to and how they are used. They chose not to because it is more profitable to chose not to. This isn’t either/or. You blame the operators of those websites AND you blame big tech.
We need to stop pretending it is remotely OK to behave without any semblance of humanist morals in the pursuit of capital. It isn’t. It never was. It never will be. Anyone who tells you profits need to be prioritized over ethical standards, in any situation, at any time, for any reason, should be committed.
Trackers like the FB pixel, Google Analytics, etc provide value to the people/company that run the site, particularly the marketing teams. There’s really no privacy-respecting alternatives that have all the same features which is why they’re still commonly used. Google Analytics has far more features that most other similar tools.