Social media giant Meta (formerly Facebook) has agreed to stop targeting Tanya O'Carroll with advertisements. This follows a lawsuit filed by Ms. O'Carroll against Meta, alleging that its targeted advertising violated her personal privacy. This move is seen as potentially opening "a door" for other users who wish to prevent social media companies from targeting ads based on demographics and interests.
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03-24, 2025Tanya O'Carroll, 37, resides in London and works in the field of technology policy and human rights. The UK's data regulator, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), has stated that online targeted advertising should be considered direct marketing. Ms. O'Carroll created her Facebook account approximately 20 years ago and filed a lawsuit against Meta in 2022, demanding that it cease using her personal data to deliver targeted ads in her social media feed based on topics Meta believed she was interested in.
Ms. O'Carroll stated that she realized the extent of Facebook's targeted advertising when she discovered she was pregnant in 2017. "I realized that this predatory, intrusive advertising is actually something we all have a right to object to," O'Carroll said in an interview with Radio 4's Today Programme. "I don't think we should accept these unfair terms, that we agree to all of this intrusive data tracking and surveillance." She found that shortly after learning she was pregnant, the ads pushed on Facebook "suddenly started to turn into lots of baby pictures and other things – adverts about babies, pregnancy and motherhood" within a few weeks.
According to the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), organizations must control how personal information is used. Ms. O'Carroll's lawsuit argued that Facebook's targeted advertising system falls under the UK's definition of direct marketing, and therefore individuals have the right to object. Meta argued that the advertisements on its platform only target groups of at least 100 people, not individuals, and therefore do not constitute direct marketing. However, the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) disagreed. An ICO spokesperson stated: "Organizations must respect people's choices about how their data is used. This means providing users with clear opt-out options to prevent their data from being used for such purposes."
Meta stated that it disagrees with Ms. O'Carroll's claims, adding that "no business can be forced to provide its services for free." A Meta spokesperson added: "Facebook and Instagram are expensive to build and maintain, and thanks to personalized advertising, consumers in the UK can use these services for free." The spokesperson also stated that the company is "exploring" "options" for providing similar services to users in the UK and will "share more information in due course." Meta emphasized that it will continue to defend the value of personalized advertising while upholding user choice and privacy.
