Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) President Athanasios Lantos on Thursday issued an opinion largely supporting the Austrian lawyer and privacy activist who accused Mr. Mehta of abusing personal data to send targeted advertisements. announced. Meta is the parent company of popular social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.
Privacy lawyer Max Schrems sued Facebook and Meta in Austria in 2020 for misusing personal data. He asked the court for a declaration and injunction because he regularly received gay ads despite not publicly mentioning his homosexuality on his Facebook platform. He believed that targeted advertising resulted from Facebook's processing and analysis of personal data and violated the EU's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
supreme court Austria referred the matter to the CJEU in 2021, seeking clarification, including whether the GDPR's data minimization principle allows data controllers to process personal data without restrictions on time or type of data. I asked for it. The court also ruled that statements about a data subject's own sexual orientation made during a panel discussion may result in the data controller not being able to process other data related to that data subject's sexual orientation for the purpose of personalized advertising. It also asked for clarification on whether or not it would be allowed.
In his opinion published Thursday, Mr. Lantos sided with the data subject on both questions. In particular, he said the GDPR must be interpreted as “prohibiting the processing of personal data for targeted advertising purposes, without restrictions on time or type of data.” Lantos said that statements made by a person about his or her sexual orientation during a panel discussion “can, in and of themselves, be used to generate data about that person's sexual orientation or other data for purposes of personalized advertising.”
The AG's opinion is not binding, but CJEU Judges regularly follow such legal advice.
Schrems' legal team said Thursday that it was very satisfied with the AG's opinion, although it was highly anticipated. “Just because some information is public doesn’t mean it can be used for other purposes… There would be a huge chilling effect on free speech if users lost all rights to the information published.” It will have an impact,” one of Schrems’ lawyers said.
According to Meta, the company has invested $5.5 billion in privacy programs since 2019 and aggressively reduced the amount of user data it collects and uses. The company claims it is committed to “working with experts, policymakers, and regulators to strengthen our practices and responsibly design and improve our products.”