The European Commission announced Thursday an investigation into LinkedIn. The platform may be offering personalized advertisements based on special personal data. That violates the Digital Services Act (DSA).
The EU executive has sent LinkedIn a formal request to provide information on how the platform presents personalized ads. LinkedIn has until Friday, April 5, to provide the requested information. Based on these documents, the European Commission will determine the next steps. Among other things, it may decide to impose a fine on LinkedIn if the company violates the Digital Services Act.
The Digital Services Act (DSA) was created to protect citizens from the power of large tech companies. Among other things, the European regulation stipulates that companies may not offer targeted advertisements based on special personal data. Advertisements based on sexual orientation, political opinion or ethnicity are thus prohibited.
Along with several other international civil rights movements, Bits of Freedom filed a complaint with the European Commission about LinkedIn in late February. The advocacy group believes that the platform offers personalized ads based on privacy-sensitive data. This complaint is why the European Commission is opening a formal investigation into LinkedIn.
The civil rights groups call the ban on serving targeted ads based on sensitive data "an important achievement. "It recognizes that the most sensitive data should never be used to target people online. It helps protect users from discriminatory targeting and protect our democratic debate from targeted polarization and manipulation by misleading or selective messaging through ads," European Digital Rights (EDRi) said of the issue.
Bits of Freedom said it wanted the complaint to contribute to the "effective enforcement" of the DSA and make the European regulation a success. The DSA came into force in August 2023 for Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) such as Google, Meta and Amazon. As of Saturday, Feb. 17, the legislation also applies to smaller retailers and online service providers.
LinkedIn is now the fourth company to be investigated by the European Commission for possible violation of the DSA. Earlier, Brussels also announced investigations against TikTok and X. TikTok is said to have too addictive a design, does not respect the privacy of minors and is not transparent enough about its algorithmic systems.
The European Commission believes X is not taking enough measures to combat the spread of disinformation and illegal content. It also alleges that X has done too little to increase the transparency of the platform. Finally, the Commission believes the user interface design for blue checkmarks is misleading.
On Thursday, the European Commission announced an investigation into AliExpress for possibly violating the DSA. The Chinese retailer allegedly sells products with health and safety risks, gives minors too easy access to pornographic images, does not have a consumer complaint handling system and is not transparent about the parameters used by the recommendation systems.
