Facebook agrees to halt personalised ads for UK woman after legal challenge

ICO says targeted advertising does qualify as direct marketing

The landmark case could pave the way for others seeking to opt out of personalised ads on other platforms.

Facebook has agreed to stop targeting advertisements at a UK woman who sued its parent company, Meta, in a landmark case that could pave the way for others seeking to opt out of personalised ads.

Tanya O'Carroll, 37, a London-based expert in tech policy and human rights, took on the tech giant, arguing that Meta's ad targeting practices violated her right to privacy and amounted to direct marketing under UK law.

O'Carroll filed her lawsuit in 2022, asking Meta to stop using her personal data to fill her Facebook feed with adverts based on her demographics and interests.

The legal battle concluded with Meta agreeing to stop targeting her with personalised ads – a decision that O'Carroll says opens a "gateway" for others to demand similar changes.

O'Carroll created her Facebook account almost 20 years ago, but her concerns about targeted advertising intensified in 2017 when she became pregnant.

The ads she got "suddenly started changing within weeks to lots of baby photos and other things - ads about babies and pregnancy and motherhood," O'Carroll told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme.

"I just found it unnerving - this was before I'd even told people in my private life, and yet Facebook had already determined that I was pregnant."

O'Carroll said her experience highlights the extent to which Facebook collects and analyses personal information to predict intimate details of users' lives.

"I knew that this kind of predatory, invasive advertising is actually something that we all have a legal right to object to," she added.

Her lawsuit was grounded in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which gives individuals in the UK and the EU the right to object to how their personal data is used. Her legal team argued that Facebook's targeted advertising system fell under the UK's definition of direct marketing, which individuals have the right to opt out of.

Meta, however, disagreed. The company claimed that its ad targeting system did not constitute direct marketing, as ads were only targeted to groups of a minimum size of 100 people rather than individuals.

The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the country's data watchdog, sided with O'Carroll. The ICO maintained that targeted advertising qualified as direct marketing and that users had the right to refuse it.

In response to the settlement, Meta issued a statement reaffirming that its platform provides "robust settings and tools for users to control their data and advertising preferences."

However, Meta denied any wrongdoing and maintained that no business should be forced to provide its services for free.

Meta has already introduced a subscription model in most of Europe, allowing users to pay a monthly fee to remove ads from Facebook and Instagram.

The company confirmed that it is "exploring the option" of offering a similar subscription service to UK users.

Meta tests AI-generated Instagram comments

In related news, Meta has been testing AI-generated comment suggestions on Instagram. The move was spotted by X user and social media feature tester Jonah Manzano.

Manzano's video demonstration reveals a "Write with Meta AI" prompt, accessible via a pencil icon next to the comment text bar.

Upon tapping the icon, Meta AI analyses the post's content and offers three comment suggestions. For instance, a photo of someone smiling in their living room elicited suggestions like "Cute living room setup," "Love the cozy atmosphere," and "Great photo shoot location." Users dissatisfied with the initial suggestions can refresh for alternative options.

"We regularly test more features for you to use Meta AI across our apps," a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch.

While Meta did not disclose the test feature's availability, they acknowledged a similar experiment with AI-generated comments on Facebook last year.

This new Instagram feature follows Meta's prior, and ultimately scrapped, attempt to introduce AI-generated characters with unique profiles, a move that was widely criticised by Facebook users.