European Court of Justice rules Meta must incorporate data minimization into targeted advertising practices

The Court of Justice of the European Union ruled in favor of NOYB Chairman Max Schrems in his civil complaint against Meta, finding the company violated the EU General Data Protection Regulation’s data minimization principle. Per the ruling, Meta was also found to have engaged in retroactive processing of sensitive personal information for the purpose of targeted advertising.

In its ruling on case C-446/21 dated 4th October 2024, the European Court of Justice stated that  An online social network such as Facebook cannot use all of the personal
data obtained for the purposes of targeted advertising, without restriction as to time and without distinction as to type of data. In particular,  the judges ruled that  the fact that a person has made a statement about his or her sexual orientation on the occasion of a public panel discussion does not authorise the operator of an online social network platform to process other data relating
to that person’s sexual orientation, obtained, as the case may be, outside that platform using partner third-party websites and apps, with a view to aggregating and analyzing those data, in order to offer that person personalized advertising. This will most presumably have some effects on targeted advertising and the data that can be used in order to provide personalized services.