Case could affect all social media platforms
The High Court in England and Wales has seen a claim filed which alleges Facebook has failed to respect the right under data protection legislation to object to direct marketing and in particular to profiling of personal data to use for advertising purposes.
The claimant in the case, Tanya O’Carroll, is a rights campaigner and has claimed that despite numerous requests to Meta, Facebook’s parent company, they have processed her personal data for direct marketing, including profiling and continue to do so.
Ms O’Carroll seeks a declaration that Meta is breaking the UK GDPR (Article 21(2) – (3)) and has , and is still infringing her rights, and a compliance order requiring Meta to stop this.
“This case is really about us all being able to connect with social media on our own terms, and without having to essentially accept that we should be subjected to hugely invasive tracking surveillance profiling just to be able to access social media,”
The Competition and Markets Authority, the UK competition regulator, told the Government in 2020 that a pro-competition regulatory regime was needed to deal with the online market, in particular with the power that Facebook and Google have.
They commissioned a report which found Facebook “uses default settings to nudge people into using their services and giving up their data”. This includes the need to accept personalised advertising as a condition for using the platform, which is contrary to UK data protection legislation.
What was interesting was that in the report only a small minority of users (13 per cent) were happy to share their data in return for relevant ads! This is obviously why they don’t ask for consent upfront!
This is the beginning of a long process and we will have to wait for the final verdict. However, social media platforms will be hoping that Ms O’Carroll will be unsuccessful, as if she wins, their influence will be significantly diminished.