EU ruling clamps down on Meta’s use of personal data for ads

The European Court of Justice has decided that Facebook owner Meta must minimize the amount of personal data it uses for personalized ads, the BBC reports. The decision from the EU’s top court means that only a small part of Meta’s data collection can be used for advertisements.

The ruling stems from a complaint by privacy activist Max Schrems, who said Facebook used data about his sexual orientation for targeted ads — even though Schrems himself had not shared information about his sexual orientation on the platform.

Meta said it does not use so-called specially categorized data linked to sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, state of healt,h or religion for personalized ads. Such data is classified as sensitive and EU data protection legislation has strict requirements for processing it. The company says it takes privacy very seriously and would have further comment after it reviews the ruling.