Social media platforms such as Meta’s Facebook must limit the use of personal data including someone’s sexual orientation for targeted advertising, the European Union’s top court ruled Friday.
Austria’s Supreme Court had asked the European Court of Justice (ECJ) for guidance after privacy activist Max Schrems brought a case against US tech giant Meta.
Schrems had contested what he called the “unlawful” processing of personal data, saying that publicly referring to his sexual orientation does not mean “consenting” to its use for personalised advertising.
Schrems had regularly received advertisements directed at LGBTQ people and invitations to corresponding events.
In its ruling, the ECJ cited the “principle of data minimisation” laid down by the European Union’s landmark General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The regulation “precludes” all data obtained by a social network operator “from being aggregated, analysed and processed for the purposes of targeted advertising”, the court said.
The court said …