Civic Organizations in Korea sign petition claiming Meta is abusing dominant market position to violate privacy laws

Sep 24 Blog

What happened? 

The Citizens’ Coalition for Economic Justice (CCEJ) and 37 other civic organizations have signed a petition for Meta to “cease their threats to users and respect their rights over their personal data”, while also claiming that Meta’s privacy policy violates Korea’s privacy legislation – in particular, the restriction on excessive collection of information. 

Why is this important? 

This is yet another case of Meta being alleged to be violating its own privacy policy or their practices violating common privacy laws such as laws requiring meaningful consent before the collection of data, and laws limiting collection to only information necessary for legitimate business purposes. The ongoing lawsuits and the hefty fines given raise concerns that Meta is failing to meet privacy laws in multiple countries, which could severely impact its business and user retention. 

In more detail: 

The issue is that Meta is requiring extensive collection of personal data as ‘mandatory’, and telling users that not agreeing to provide such information to Meta would prevent them from using their Facebook and Instagram accounts. S15(1) of the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) in Korea requires only the minimum information necessary for legitimate purposes to be collected, and s39(3) forbids companies from refusing to provide services if their reason is a user’s refusal to provide information other than said necessary info. The CCEJ and others state that the information Meta claims to be ‘necessary’ includes location data, behavioural data on websites and apps, and purchase records. They further claim that the threat of account suspension if a user does not agree to the collection of such personal information is an abuse of their dominant market position, which could violate fair market laws. Similar allegations have been previously raised and upheld in Germany’s federal courts in 2020. (this antitrust case involving privacy laws in the EU is still ongoing). Moreover, one of Meta’s mandatory policies includes providing personal information collected by Meta to government authorities. Given the current federal abortion ban in the US, there are concerns that personal information relating to abortion that Meta collected could be given to the US government . 

What else is happening? 

Such challenges being brought by civic or consumer organizations has precedent in other countries as well. For instance, The European Union’s top court ruled that consumer protection associations can bring action against Meta for violation of the GDPR. This is also merely the latest in a string of privacy violations Meta has been accused and sued recently. Meta settled a lawsuit for $37.5M after being sued for tracking their users’ movements without permission in California, which violated both their own privacy policy and also California’s privacy law. Earlier this year, Meta was fined 405M Euros by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner for violation of kids privacy on Instagram, including publication of kids’ email addresses and phone numbers. The most recent case is a lawsuit against Meta for tracking iOS users’ location even after they had opted out of it. 

What about Canada? 

Given that Canada has many similar laws in place, such as laws requiring meaningful consent before the collection of data, and limitation of the collection of data only to that which is strictly necessary for legitimate business purposes, it is likely that the results of these privacy cases can be applied to Meta users in Canada as well.     

Written by Simplawfy