Targeted advertising’s days may be numbered. The Wall Street Journal and Reuters report that the European Data Protection Board has ruled that Meta cannot continue targeting ads based on user’s online activity without affirmative, opt-in consent. This ruling is based on the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This is a big step in the right direction: voluntary opt-in consent should be the baseline requirement for any data collection, retention, or use. And we should take a step further: online behavioral advertising should be banned.
The ruling is not final, or even public. The Board has sent the matter back to Ireland’s Data Protection Commission to issue an order, and reportedly to assess fines. Meta can still appeal. If the decision is finalized and enforced, Meta will need to change its surveillance and consent practices, and ads on Facebook and Instagram will start working significantly differently. Meta would have to seek affirmative consent from users before sending them targeted ads based on surveillance of their online behavior. Meta could pivot to “contextual ads” based only on the content a user is currently interacting with.
The surveillance-based advertising in question here involves how people use Meta’s own apps. Since 2020, Meta has offered settings to opt out of ad targeting based on information from other apps, websites, a
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