LONDON — Meta in hot water once again. The European Union’s top court ruled on Friday that social networking company Meta cannot utilize public information on a user’s sexual orientation collected outside of its platforms for targeted advertising under the bloc’s tough data privacy regulations.
The ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg is a triumph for Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems, who has been a thorn in the side of Big Tech corporations over their compliance with the 27-nation bloc’s data protection regulations.
Austrian Activist Schrems Wins Privacy Case Against Meta Over Personal Data On Sexual Orientation
The EU court released its decision after Austria’s Supreme Court requested assistance in Schrems’ case on how to apply privacy standards known as the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.
Schrems had protested that Facebook had used personal information, including his sexual orientation, to target him with online advertising despite the fact that he had never acknowledged his homosexuality on his account. He had only publicly acknowledged this fact once, during a panel discussion.
“An online social network such as Facebook cannot use all of the personal data obtained for the purposes of targeted advertising, without restriction as to time and without distinction as to type of data,” the court stated in a press release summarizing its ruling.
Even though Schrems disclosed his homosexuality during the debate, the agreement “does not authorise the operator of an online social network platform to process other data relating to his sexual orientation, obtained, as the case may be, outside that platform, with a view to aggregating and analysing those data, in order to offer him personalised advertising.”
Austrian Activist Schrems Wins Privacy Case Against Meta Over Personal Data On Sexual Orientation
“Everyone using Facebook has access to a wide range of settings and tools that allow people to manage how we use their information,” according to a statement from the business.
Katharina Raabe-Stuppnig, Schrems’ lawyer, applauded the court’s decision.
“Meta has been accumulating a massive user data pool over the past 20 years, and it is growing by the day. However, EU law mandates ‘data minimisation’,” she stated in a statement. “Following this ruling only a small part of Meta’s data pool will be allowed to be used for advertising — even when users consent to ads.”
SOURCE | AP
