LinkedIn, a social networking site owned by Microsoft, announced on Friday that it has stopped using a feature that lets it exploit sensitive personal data for targeted advertising to comply with EU regulations on online content.
This is in response to a Digital Services Act complaint filed by civil society organisations. Targeting according to information like political opinions and race was made possible by technology.
Online intermediaries are required under the Digital Services Act (DSA) to provide users with greater control over how their data is used, including the ability to disable customised information.
As per the complaint, LinkedIn might have given advertisers the ability to target LinkedIn users based on specific categories of personal data mentioned in Article 9(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation.
These categories include political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, racial or ethnic origin, and trade union membership, which are disclosed by users through their participation in LinkedIn Groups.
Should this turn out to be true, it would have amounted to a violation of the DSA’s ban on showing tailored adverts depending on particular types of personal information.
LinkedIn’s vice president of law and digital safety, Patrick Corrigan, stated that although the company rejected the idea that marketers may “indirectly” utilise its platform to target users based on unique data categories, it has still decided to withdraw this tool.
“We made this change to prevent any misconception that ads to European members could be indirectly targeted based on special categories of data or related profiling categories,” Corrigan wrote on LinkedIn today.
Reacting to the response from LinkedIn, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton said: “Following a civil society complaint, in March we asked LinkedIn to explain how they comply with the DSA ban on targeted ads based on sensitive personal data, like sexual orientation, political opinions, or race. As a result, LinkedIn is voluntarily discontinuing the functionality in question.
“The Commission will monitor the effective implementation of LinkedIn’s public pledge to ensure full compliance with the DSA. While we will remain vigilant, it is positive to see the DSA delivering change that no other law has attained so far, in Europe and beyond.”
We earlier reported that the European Commission announced that it is looking into the possibility that Meta’s Facebook and Instagram accounts could have breached the DSA.
