Meta takes data privacy “very seriously”. Excuse me, what?

The European Union’s highest court has ruled that Facebook must limit the amount of personal data it uses for personalized advertising. This decision came in response to a complaint filed by Max Schrems, a privacy advocate, who argued that Facebook misused his personal data about his sexual orientation to target ads at him.

The Court of Justice for the European Union (CJEU) found that data protection law does not allow companies to use sensitive data like sexual orientation, race, or health status for personalized advertising without strict restrictions. Facebook claims it does not use such data for this purpose, but the CJEU’s ruling suggests otherwise; not that we needed the CJEU’s ruling to confirm the feeling that personal data is being used by Facebook for advertising purposes!

The decision has significant implications for Facebook’s business model, which relies heavily on collecting and using large amounts of personal data for targeted advertising. It also sets a precedent for other tech companies that rely on similar practices.

A spokesperson for Meta notes that the company takes privacy “very seriously” and further insists that the company has invested more than 5 billion Euros “to embed privacy at the heart of all of their products. With a 5 billion dollar investment, where do you think Meta’s return on investment is coming from? 

Andrew Keen popularized the phrase “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product” in his book “The Internet Is Not the Answer: The Failure of the Digital Revolution” published in 2015. In the book, he argues that many free online services, such as social media platforms, make money by collecting and selling user data. Therefore, the suggestion is that users are essentially the product that these companies sell to advertisers.

It’s hard to fathom that a company whose primary source of revenue is advertising sales, recording $135 billion in sales in 2023 (with profits in excess of $39 billion), is taking the privacy of user data, “seriously”. Multi-billion dollar companies are “serious”. Which begs the question; whose privacy is Meta taking very seriously?

References: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gr4r5ln03o