Hailee Stegall
Colorado born and bred. Proud childless cat lady. Earth sign...
The Court of Justice of the European Union, or CJEU, has ruled that the social media conglomerate Meta can no longer push ads that focus on one's sexual orientation, regardless of if they speak about it publicly or not.
An Austrian man, Max Schrems, who identifies as gay, brought this concern before a lower Austrian court initially -- He's been receiving ads for nearly a decade that seem directly targeted at gay men. He argued that this is a direct violation of the EU's General Protection Data Regulation (GPDR), which regulates how users' personal data can be used across the internet's algorithms. He theorizes that the company can determine the sexuality of users based on their interaction with certain kinds of content and then push ads that align with that sexuality purposely. The Austrian court ruled that because Schrems has spoken publicly about his sexuality as part of his career as a gay privacy activist, Meta is allowed to target ads towards him based on that.
The CJEU ruled against the Austrian court, saying that just because Schrems has spoken out about his sexual orientation, that does not give Meta the right to search through his online activity outside of Meta platforms in order to target him with LGBTQ+-related advertising, as is the case with how social media algorithms determine what to push to users in ads. However, this ruling may not only apply to queer people online, it seems; the official ruling states that personal data of social media users can not be "aggregated, analyzed, and processed for the purposes of targeted advertising without restriction as to time and without distinction as to type of data."
Meta spokespeople argue that users can customize their settings to discern how the conglomerate uses their information, and that privacy is one of their top concerns and investments. However, Schrems' lawyer says that EU law requires social media companies like Meta to practice "data minimization" where only a small percentage of the massive data pools they collect from peoples' online activity can be used in targeted advertising, which was clearly not being practiced in this case, so who's to say how many other cases this allegedly applies to? This isn't the first time that Meta has been found guilty by the queer communit -- For example, in summer of 2022, they refused to crack down on alt-right hate groups targeting Pride campaigns and queer users in general. This ruling, though -- at least among member states in the EU -- could lead to increased online privacy not just for the LGBTQ+ community, but for all social media users.