Yes. It is absolutely illegal. Not sure anywhere where this would be legal. Ie. "TV or radio ads about alcohol cannot target children. They also should not be irresponsible in targeting adults." https://www.acma.gov.au/ads-alcohol-tobacco-or-therapeutic-g...

Edit: changed the example

What does that have to do with this?

I do agree though and would go further and make it illegal to show ads to anyone whose profile states they are under 18.

You can't, as in any developed nation I can think of, advertise alcohol to children. Take a look at the actions the industry has taken when they even put alcohol ads too close to children, or too appealing to children, ctrl-f for moon dog. https://www.abac.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/ABAC-Quar...

You cannot advertise alcohol to children in Australia

That's... A complicated question. It does appear to be a breach of ABAC Responsible Alcohol Marketing Code (3b) [0], but the ABAC would only review it if a complaint was raised.

A complaint first has to be raised with Ad Standards, who undertake ethical review on a case-by-case basis.

That is, it is generally illegal to market to those who are underage, but it is not generally illegal to display such advertising in a space where those who are outside of the target audience.

The usual legal process is to review individual ads, and those creating the adverts are the ones who end up in trouble. An entire marketplace (like Facebook) deciding that marketing to minors is okay is untested waters, because each individual advert would normally be ruled illegal so why the hell would the market allow it?

[0] https://www.abac.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/ABAC-Resp...

In my country (not AU) they banned alcohol advertising completely a couple of years ago, because alcoholism is a big problem here. So instead of advertising alcohol, the breweries now advertise their alcohol free drinks. They just changed "Carlsberg" to "Carlsberg Alcohol Free" on the same ads, and boom it's allowed.

Reminds me of cigarette advertising in Formula 1, where brands like Phillip Morris have constantly tried to find new ways to sneak imagery and color schemes onto the cars that are reminiscent of their branding despite cigarette ads being banned in the early 2000s. There have been cars the looked exactly like a Marlboro pack (red car, white chevron rear wing), sponsored by Marlboro, but without the actual word Marlboro that have been allowed to race.

They even created a new entity (Mission Winnow) in 2018 which is purportedly an initiative “to create engagement around the role of science, technology and innovation as a powerful force for good in any industry”, whatever that means. Conveniently, MW has the same color scheme and a suspiciously similar "M" logo to Marlboro, and surprise, they've been a title sponsor of the Ferrari cars since, though they didn't use the branding in 2020 after countries started investigating whether they were flaunting the ad ban.

That is not how ethics and laws interact. The law sets a minimum standard that can be enforced by the government with a penalty. No matter what Facebook does, they are not deciding what is or is not legal.

Ethically, you often have an obligation to do more than the bare legal minimum in order to not be a horrible person.

When watching TV during a football (Aussie rules football not soccer) game I see probably 15-20 gambling ads and so would the 0-17 year olds watching. There is also an ad with Matthew McConaughey drinking whiskey, although im not sure if that's during prime time or late hours. Never seen a smoking or vaping ad though.

Yes but they can't run alongside children's programming or feature themes that are intended for children. Eg, they can't target 13 to 17 year olds even if it's during sports

>When watching TV during a football (Aussie rules football not soccer) game I see probably 15-20 gambling ads and so would the 0-17 year olds watching.

There's a huge difference between targeting an age group and the age group being exposed by association.

If you saw ads on the Sunday morning cartoons for whiskey and gambling, you could rightly say they are targeting children.

Ads put on during a football game that targets 25-50 year olds that may happen to have younger viewers != targeting those younger viewers.

Facebook is targeting 13-17 year olds.

Never said there wasn't...

Agreed. Instead of expecting a for-profit company to decide what’s ok we should simply pass laws that makes advertising to people under 18 illegal.

For instance if your social media account says you are less than 18 then it should be illegal to show any ad to you.

This will have the additional benefit of internet communication technology companies having to rethink kids as a profit center.

Banning advertising to kids under 18 is a pretty interesting idea.

You obviously can't completely ban it, since kids under 18 would still have access to cable TV, and therefore advertisments.

But I could see a system where -targeting- kids under 18 would be banned, whereas advertising as a whole is not illegal for < 18 so long as the advertisements kids are seeing aren't specifically targeted only at minors.