Facebook – Court Ruling (Germany, 2023)

The data subject had a Facebook account since 2008. On 16 May 2018, nude images were uploaded to data subject’s account. The controller (“Facebook”) temporarily blocked the data subject’s account. The account was unblocked the same day. On 28 November 2021, the data subject posted a video of an artist on his Facebook profile. The controller deleted the video and after review, reactivated the account. On 23 December 2021, images or videos of child sexual abuse were published by third parties via the data subject’s account. The controller blocked the data subject’s account again. The data subject tried to persuade the controller to reopen their account, but failed. On 17 January 2023, the data subject contacted the controller with a letter from a lawyer, requesting the controller to restore their account and asserted claims for, amongst others, information and correcting their data. A few days later, the data subject regained access to their account. The data subject then went to the Regional Court (“LG Stuttgart”) to request correction of all the data subject’s data by deleting all deletion and blocking notices under Article 16 GDPR and Article 17 GDPR. The data subject argued that the controller no longer needed the user data relating to the deletion and blocking processes. The controller argued that the question of the lawfulness of the reasons behind the blocking notices was only a value judgement that is not subject to rectification and that the blocking notices were still needed for quality assurance and legal defence. The Regional Court dismissed the case. There was no claim for deletion, because according to the Court, incorrect data would not be stored by the controller. It only stored documentation on what had occurred, such as when the data subject was blocked on the controller’s platform. According to the findings of the Regional Court, a reset of the offences counter was also ruled out, as all offences expired after one year and were therefore no long