A technology campaigner is suing Facebook’s parent company Meta in the High Court in London over the social media giant’s refusal to let users opt out of user profiling data it uses to sell adverts.
Tanya O’Carroll, 35, says she believes her legal challenge could lead to a landmark change to the rights of social media users.
O’Carroll, an independent consultant on technology and human rights, told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme, “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.”
She said she became a mother in 2017 and noticed she was being “bombarded” with adverts for baby content.
O’Carroll said she tried to use her Facebook settings to switch off the incessant adverts but she remained inundated by them.
She said Facebook had given her profile more than 700 characteristics—based on content she had consumed—several of which were “protected.”
O’Carroll told The Times of London: “Homosexuality was one of them. The name of a UK political party was one of them. Feminism was one of them. These are things that are actually just considered sensitive, protected characteristics, things that could reveal things about you that really an advertiser should not be seeing.”
Objection to ‘Surveillance’ by Facebook
She told the BBC, “This is where our daily politics, our access to news and information, public debate, as well as our ability to connect with family and friends, all play out and Facebook has made the condition for accessing that global public square that we all subject ourselves to surveillance.”
“So, with this case, I’m really using this right that’s long been there on the law books, but has been up until now not been exercised, which is to simply say ‘I object,’ and if we are successful in that then everybody will have that right,” said O’Carroll.
Meta has said it is changing its data collection software to exclude protected characteristics, but O’Carroll is suing on the basis of the European Union’s GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, legislation that gives individuals the right to object to their personal data being used for direct marketing.
Meta denies GDPR applies to social media and says Facebook users agree to the use of their data being used in such a way when they accept the terms and conditions.
PA Media contributed to this report.
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Chris Summers is a UK-based journalist covering a wide range of national stories, with a particular interest in crime, policing and the law.
