The German competition authority has won its case against Facebook's parent company Meta in a personal data collection case.
German authorities were able to invoke the EU’s GDPR rules to prohibit Facebook from continuing to collect data from third-party websites for personalised advertising, the European Court of Justice ruled on Tuesday.
Those who register on Facebook accept the general terms and conditions of parent company Meta Platforms Ireland, Meta’s European headquarters. Therefore, the user also "accepts" the processing of data collected on other websites and applications, which is then used to offer personalised online advertising.
However, in 2019, the German competition authority banned Meta from still using data collected on websites other than Facebook itself.
According to the authority, this violates European GDPR legislation around data processing. Meta argued that the German competition authority does not have jurisdiction over this, with the case eventually ending up before the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
The ECJ ruling vindicates the German competition authority, stating that such an authority can check whether a company is acting in accordance with GDPR rules, as long as it does so to judge if there is an abuse of market power.
The case is seen as a measure of how far European competition authorities can go in protecting user data against US tech giants. Meta was fined a record €1.2 billion as recently as May for violating EU privacy rules.
The company was given five months to stop transferring personal data to the US.
The ruling comes as Meta prepares to launch a new app "Threads" – in a bid to rival Twitter, which has been plagued with problems since Elon Musk's takeover in 2022.
