Chapter 4 - Online Platforms: Gatekeepers of Advertisements

Summary

This chapter uses a case-based approach to address how companies have increasingly developed targeted advertisements to monetize their businesses. I particularly explore the business model adopted by Facebook and Google in Section I. In Section II, I present how privacy and equality laws have been mobilized (or not) to address the misuse of personal data and discrimination within their targeting practices.

Regarding Facebook, I develop the issues existent in the cases Onuoha v Facebook, Bradley v T-Mobile US, National Fair Housing Alliance v Facebook, Riddick v Facebook, and Spees et al. v Facebook litigated in the United States. These cases bring to light how targeting tools, developed by the platform, allow businesses (advertisers) to exclude protected classes from receiving their offers and, therefore, how this practice poses great risks to the principle of equality in the access to good, service, and employment offers.

Moreover, through litigation against Google and Facebook involving personal data rights, I present how the debate about online targeted advertisements is to a great extent circumscribed by data protection law in the EU. The cases Authorities Persoonsgegevens v Facebook in the Netherlands, Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés v Facebook in France, and Agencia Espanola de Datos v Facebook in Spain illustrate that data protection law should be articulated with antidiscrimination rights in the fi ght against discrimination occurring with the use of targeting tools in the EU. This articulation has scantly occurred so far.

SECTION I. SOCIAL NETWORK AND SEARCH ENGINE PLATFORMS

FROM FACE MASH TO FACEBOOK

A face book, with individual photographs and names – originally printed and more recently available online – is used by several American universities at the beginning of the academic year to help students to get to know each other. Inspired by this book, Mark Zuckerberg developed a website called FaceMash in his second year of college in 2003. FaceMash had 450 visitors and 22,000 photograph views in its fi rst four hours online. Despite its success among students, Harvard administration disapproved of it, because it had breached the university web security and violated students’ individual privacy.