Facebook, owned by Meta, has been ordered to stop collecting personal data for the purpose of marketing and advertising after a lawsuit was launched in the High Court of England and Wales.

Tanya O’Carroll, a tech and human rights activist, filed the lawsuit, claiming that this amounts to “surveillance advertising.” According to her legal team, when O’Carroll tried to opt-out of having her personal information processed by Meta for marketing purposes, “Meta repeatedly refused to respect… O’Carroll’s absolute right to object to being surveilled and profiled.”

O’Carroll’s complaint centers on claims that Meta is violating UK GDPR, which governs data protection, by doing this. According to her legal counsel at AWO, internet users have had the “right to object” since the GDPR was adopted in the UK in 2018.

Data rights organization AWO’s legal director, solicitor Ravi Naik, stated: “Meta is straining to concoct legal arguments to deny our client even has this right. But Tanya’s claim is straightforward; it will hopefully breathe life back into the rights we are all guaranteed under the GDPR.”

The announcement comes after a judge in Washington fined Meta $24.6 million for willfully violating the state’s campaign finance transparency 822 times.

O’Carroll stated in a press release: “While the case is being brought by an individual data subject in the UK against Facebook, a win could set a precedent for millions of users of search engines or social media in the UK and EU who have been forced to accept invasive surveillance and profiling to use digital platforms.”

Meta announced earlier this month that it would lay off more than 11,000 workers as a result of the sharp reduction in profitability and accompanying drop in share price at the end of October.

As some commentators have highlighted, the lawsuit strikes at the core of Facebook’s economic model. Since demonetizing some of the data that powers current ad sales would be preferable to shareholders to investing billions of dollars in an unsuccessful Metaverse