LinkedIn, a popular employment-based online platform owned by Microsoft, has stopped using a tool aimed at targeted advertising in the European Union (EU), according to a post by LinkedIn’s Vice President Patrick Corrigan.
The tool collected personal data of users for deployment of personalised advertisements. LinkedIn is, however, disabling the tool to comply with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA).
The DSA obliges leading social networking platform to place stricter measures to protect data privacy, prevent child sexual exploitation, and tackle other forms of potentially harmful material. Under the DSA, online platforms with over 45 million monthly active users are labelled as “very large platforms”. Violations of the law could result in penalties worth up to six per cent of a company’s yearly turnover.
“After consultations with the DG-CNECT [Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology of the EU Commission], we’ve decided to adjust those tools by removing the ability to create an advertising audience in Europe that used membership in LinkedIn Groups as an input,” said VP Corrigan in a LinkedIn post Friday. “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.”
LinkedIn’s discontinuation of the personalised ads tool arrives after civil society organisations filed a complaint to the European Commission. With the DSA allowing users more control over how they would want their data to be used, LinkedIn is obliged to drop its personalised content.
LinkedIn was sent a request for information in March this year by the European Commission after rights organisations raised concerns about the potential targeting of users by advertisers based on ethnic, racial, and political opinions. The complaint focused on LinkedIn’s membership groups.
“The change is effective now for all new advertising campaigns,” Corrigon said.
