Facebook continues to group its users by race and religion, being illegal
Facebook still maintains the segregation of ads to its users by religion or race, even though users have not given permission. This would violate many anti-discrimination rules and the GDPR.
We have known for some time that Facebook committed certain acts of segregation that were not entirely legal in the United States. In general, this made Facebook detect your skin color, religion, political ideology, sexual identity and other very sensitive aspects for many people in order to sell this segmentation to advertisers, something that in the United States was declared as discriminatory. Despite the notices of possible fines, it appears that not much has changed.
According to a study carried out by members of the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness of Spain, Facebook maintains these segregations active, although it does not make them directly accessible to advertisers, but maintains these lists by race, ideology and sexuality. This in itself is concerning, but there are many dangerous and legal implications.
Users identified by ideology and sexuality
On the one hand, we have that in the United States they have already been warned that if they continue with these factors they will receive more fines. On the other hand, we already know that in Europe this is clearly against the GDPR, since users have not been asked for permission to collect or process this information and leaving these lists is considered almost impossible at the user level. The most dangerous part is that these lists could reach the governments of countries where there is systematic persecution of certain people.
For example, a government that punishes with jail or even the death penalty could force to pass the lists of people identified as political rivals or homosexual or atheistic people, since there are still countries where these things are a clear crime.
Source: Arxiv
