A plan by Meta to use the personal data of Facebook and Instagram users’ data to train its Artificial Intelligence (AI) models has been rejected by an advocacy group in Europe.
The group, NOYB (none of your business) in a statement released on Thursday, called on privacy enforcers across Europe to stop such use.
It also urged national privacy watchdogs to act immediately, saying recent changes in Meta’s privacy policy, which will come into force on June 26, would allow it to use years of personal posts, private images, or online tracking data for the Facebook owner’s AI technology.
The advocacy group said it has launched 11 complaints against Meta and asked data protection authorities in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Spain to launch an urgency procedure because of the imminent changes.
Meta rejects criticism
Meta has rejected NOYB’s criticism of its plan and referred to a May 22 blog in which it said it uses publicly available online and licensed information to train AI as well as information that people have shared publicly on its products and services.
However, a message sent to Facebook users said Meta may still process information about people who do not use its products and services nor have an account if they appear in an image or are mentioned in posts or captions shared by a user.
“We are confident that our approach complies with privacy laws, and our approach is consistent with how other tech companies are developing and improving their AI experiences in Europe (including Google and Open AI),” a Meta’s spokesperson told Reuters.
What NOYB is saying
NOYB founder Max Schrems said in the statement that Europe’s top court had already ruled on this issue in 2021.
“The European Court of Justice (CJEU) has already made it clear that Meta has no ‘legitimate interest’ to override users’ right to data protection when it comes to advertising,” he said.
“Yet the company is trying to use the same arguments for the training of undefined ‘AI technology’. It seems that Meta is once again blatantly ignoring the judgements of the CJEU,” Schrems said, adding that opting out was extremely complicated.
“Shifting the responsibility to the user is completely absurd. The law requires Meta to get opt-in consent, not to provide a hidden and misleading opt-out form,” Schrems said, adding: “If Meta wants to use your data, they have to ask for your permission. Instead, they made users beg to be excluded”.
Meanwhile, NOYB said it has already filed several complaints against Meta and other Big Tech companies over alleged breaches of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which threatens fines of up to 4% of a company’s total global turnover for violations.
What you should know
Several tech platforms like Meta are coming under the radar of data protection watchdogs over their propensity to misuse the data of billions of people on their platforms. In October last year, the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) said it was investigating Meta and other companies over possible data breaches based on complaints from users.
According to the Commission, complaints against Meta touched on behavioural advertising without the explicit consent of data subjects. It added that approximately 40 million Facebook accounts in Nigeria might have been affected by the data processing under investigation.
