On Thursday 6 June, Noyb, the Austrian privacy protection association, announced that it had filed complaints in eleven European Union countries (Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Spain) relating to changes to the privacy policy of Meta (parent company of Facebook and Instagram).
From 26 June, the platform plans to use its users’ public messages, posted photos and other personal browsing data to train its future artificial intelligence technology.
The association believes that Meta could retrieve “any data from any source for any purpose and make it available to anyone in the world”, in direct violation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
“Instead of asking users for their consent (opt-in), Meta argues that it has a legitimate interest that overrides the fundamental right to data protection and privacy of European users”, Noyb denounces in its press release.
This argument had already been used by Meta in the context of using personal data for advertising purposes, an argument that was rejected by the Court of Justice of the European Union last July.
See the Noyb press release: https://aeur.eu/f/clf (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)