A lawsuit filed in the High Court of England and Wales has demanded that Meta’s Facebook social media platform stops harvesting personal data for the purposes of advertising and marketing.

The claimant, tech and human rights activist Tanya O’Carroll, has claimed this amounts to “surveillance advertising” with her legal team claiming: “Meta repeatedly refused to respect … O’Carroll’s absolute right to object to being surveilled and profiled” when she tried to opt out of having her personal data being processed by Meta for the purposes of marketing.