Max Schrems – Court Ruling (Austria, 2021)

In the proceedings, the plaintiff filed a total of 12 applications. The court ruled on 6 of these applications by partial judgment of 23 June 2021. The proceedings were interrupted with regard to the remaining 5 applications until the CJEU has ruled on the preliminary ruling proceedings initiated by order of 23 June 2021. An overall short summary can be found [https://noyb.eu/en/breaking-austrian-ogh-asks-cjeu-if-facebook-undermines-gdpr-2018 here]. This order for preliminary ruling only concerns applications 5 to 9, so that only the relevant facts are presented in a very abbreviated form below. The facts relevant for the proceedings already decided by partial judgment are presented there. The plaintiff is Max Schrems. The defendant is Facebook Ireland. Facebook provides a platform on which more than 2.2 billion users worldwide can upload data and respond to data uploaded by other users. This includes text posts, pictures, videos, events, comments, "likes", tags on photos and much more. The court explains all the functions of the Facebook platform. In particular, it explains that users network with each other in so-called "friendships". Practically all information from all users is linked to each other - especially via the friendship network. This linking allows an evaluation of the individual user beyond the data provided by the user himself. The research into the "preferences" and the "profile" of the users does not only include interests or information provided by the user himself, but all personal data available to the defendant. Facebook does not generate any content itself and only provides the infrastructure (free of charge). Facebook receives the (linked) personal data. The economic model of the defendant is to generate revenue through personalised advertising and commercial content based on the same preferences and interests. For this purpose, Facebook provides so-called business tools, which in turn can be differentiated into three tools described by the