Facebook and Instagram: In future you will be able to reject personalised advertising

Samuel Buchmann

2/8/2023

Translation: machine translated

After a long tug-of-war in court, Meta promises to no longer automatically sell usage data from Europe to third-party companies.

From this autumn, the US technology company Meta wants to ask its users for permission for personalised advertising - at least in Switzerland and the European Union. Meta announced this intention on Tuesday in a blog post. In future, you will probably be able to choose with a simple click whether your usage data may be used for advertising.

This means that the parent company of Facebook and Instagram is giving in after years of legal disputes with the European data protection authorities. Until now, the eat-or-die principle has applied on social media platforms: anyone who logs in automatically accepts that Meta can record their usage behaviour and sell it to third-party companies. This allows them to place targeted, personalised advertising.

Meta lacks a current legal basis for this practice in the EU. In January, the supervisory authority imposed a penalty of 390 million euros on the company. At the time, it overruled the Irish data protection authority, which initially considered Meta's actions to be acceptable: shortly before the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force in 2018, Facebook and Instagram changed their terms of use. This meant that users either had to accept personalised advertising or leave the platforms.

Impact on advertising revenue

The new opt-in practice is likely to be a major blow to Meta's advertising revenue in the EU. It goes in the same direction as Apple's "App Tracking Transparency", which allows iPhone users to prevent cross-app tracking. When the function was introduced two years ago, over 80 per cent rejected tracking. This cost Meta at least 10 billion worldwide and led to a slump in its share price.

In its blog post, Meta therefore tries to reassure advertisers and investors: "There is no immediate impact on our services in the region. Once this change is in place, advertisers will continue to be able to run personalised advertising campaigns to reach potential customers and grow their business." The change has already been factored into business forecasts.

Samuel Buchmann

Senior Editor

Samuel.Buchmann@digitecgalaxus.ch

My fingerprint often changes so drastically that my MacBook doesn't recognise it anymore. The reason? If I'm not clinging to a monitor or camera, I'm probably clinging to a rockface by the tips of my fingers.