Spain has blocked of rolling out election-oriented features And in the country. Data protection agency AEPD used emergency powers under the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to ban the Election Day Information and Voter Information Unit tools for up to three months as a precautionary measure.
Meta planned to use these instruments prior to the European Parliament elections. The company said it designed them to “respect user privacy and comply with GDPR” and while it disagrees with the AEPD’s position, Meta told it will comply with the command.
The agency focused on how Meta wanted to process data through the tools. It said there was no justification for collecting age data (due to the inability to verify the ages users have on their profiles) and criticized Meta’s intention to keep the data after the June elections. It claimed that this plan “reveals an additional purpose for the processing.”
Other data Meta wanted to process through the election tools included user interactions with those features and gender information. “The agency believes that the collection and retention of data planned by the company would seriously endanger the rights and freedoms of Instagram and Facebook users, who would see an increase in the amount of information it collects about them , allowing the creation of more complex, detailed and comprehensive profiles, generating more intrusive treatments,” according to the AEPD translated from Spanish. It also cited concerns about such data being made available to third parties for “non-explicit purposes.”
The AEPD claims that Meta plans to use the tools to remind eligible Facebook and Instagram users in the EU to vote. The watchdog claims Meta will identify users as eligible voters based on IP addresses and profile data about where they live. However, to be able to vote in the elections, the only requirement is that you have the adult nationality of one of the EU member states.
According to the AEPD, Meta’s approach focuses on non-EU citizens living in member states, while excluding EU citizens who do not live in the bloc. The company called the company’s handling of user data ‘unnecessary, disproportionate and excessive’ .
The European Commission has also expressed concerns about Meta’s approach to elections. In April the block in the company because of his election policies.
