Meta settles UK lawsuit, agrees to halt ad-tracking on plaintiff's data

Human rights campaigner Tanya O'Carroll has achieved a significant victory against Meta, forcing the social media giant to cease using her data for targeted advertising, as per media reports.

The breakthrough came through a settlement related to a legal challenge O'Carroll filed against Meta's data tracking and profiling practices in 2022.

O'Carroll argued that under U.K. and E.U. data protection laws, she had a legal right to object to the use of her personal data for direct marketing purposes. This included the right to demand that her data no longer be processed for microtargeted ads, which Meta's business model is built on.

Meta, however, had previously refuted this claim, asserting that its "personalized ads" were not categorized as direct marketing.

The dispute had been set to be heard in the English High Court but was resolved ahead of time, with Meta agreeing to comply with O'Carroll's request and stop using her data for advertising targeting.

“It's a bittersweet victory,” O’Carroll told TechCrunch. “I’ve proven that the right to object exists and that it applies to business models like Meta’s. However, it’s not a legal determination, and Meta has not accepted liability—just settled with me individually.”

The settlement marks a notable development in the ongoing struggle to enforce data privacy laws, especially concerning surveillance-based ad models like Meta's. The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has long provided robust protections, but enforcement against companies profiting from targeted advertising has been slow and fraught with challenges.

Although Meta has faced significant GDPR fines, the company’s core business model, reliant on consentless surveillance, has proven difficult to reform. Nonetheless, O’Carroll’s success brings hope that users can challenge this status quo.