Eunseo Hong reports:
Online marketplaces just lost their cover of neutrality on Tuesday as Europe’s top court ruled they’re responsible for leaks of user-posted content and other misuses of personal data.
The Court of Justice made it clear that when a platform controls how content appears, sets the rules for its use and profits from its visibility, it stops being a neutral host and becomes a data controller under EU privacy law, meaning it decides why and how people’s information is processed and must answer for it.
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, is the bloc’s landmark privacy law that gives people control over how their personal information is used. It’s designed to hold companies accountable when they collect, store, or share personal data, setting some of the toughest privacy standards in the world.
The court stressed that the fake post at the center of the case exposed sensitive personal details protected under the GDPR, noting that such data merits “specific protection as the context of their processing could create significant risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms” of the person involved.
Read more at Courthouse News.