EU Asks Meta To Limit Data For Personalized Ads

(RTTNews) - In a recent ruling, the Court of Justice for the European Union has ordered Meta (META) to minimize the amount of people's data it collects for personalized advertising.

The lawsuit against the Facebook-parent was initiated by Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems, who argued that the tech giant used his personal data, including information about his sexual orientation, to target him with specific ads.

The CJEU stated, "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 EU's highest court emphasized that although Schrems disclosed before the panel that he is gay, it "does not authorize 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 analyzing those data, in order to offer him personalized advertising."

Responding to the judgement, a Meta spokesperson stated that the tech giant takes data privacy "very seriously" and has invested over five billion euros "to embed privacy at the heart of all of our products".

"Meta has basically been building a huge data pool on users for 20 years now, and it is growing every day. However, EU law requires 'data minimization'," Schrems' lawyer, Katharina Raabe-Stuppnig, said 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."