In summary proceedings before the Cologne Higher Regional Court (OLG Köln), a motion by the Consumer Advice Centre North Rhine-Westphalia against Meta, the parent company of “Facebook” and “Instagram”, to prevent the processing of publicly available user data was denied last week (23.05.2025).
In April 2025, Meta Platforms Ireland Limited (hereinafter: Meta) publicly announced that it would use personal data from its users’ public profiles to train artificial intelligence from May 27, 2025. Meta operates the services “Facebook” and “Instagram”, among others. The Consumer Advice Centre North Rhine-Westphalia took action for injunction against Meta with an motion dated 12.05.2025 on the basis of the Injunctions Act (UKlaG). Data of consumers and third parties in public profiles are affected, unless the users have lodged an objection.
Following a preliminary examination as part of the summary proceedings initiated on 12.05.2025, the Higher Regional Court of Cologne assumes that Meta has not violated either the provisions of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) or the Digital Markets Act (DMA). This assessment is in line with the regulatory assessment by the Irish data protection authority responsible for Meta. It is not taking any supervisory measures in relation to the facts of the case and has announced that it will monitor the actions. With regard to the data made public by users after mid-2024, the Hamburg Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information also considers the processing to be legally possible. He was heard at the hearing on 22.05.2025.
From a preliminary point of view, the announced use of the data for AI training purposes is lawful within the meaning of Art. 6 (1) (f) GDPR, even without the consent of the data subjects. Meta pursues a legitimate purpose by using the data for the training of artificial intelligence systems. This purpose cannot be achieved by equally effective other means that would be less intrusive. There is no doubt that large amounts of data are required for training which cannot be reliably anonymized. When weighing up the rights of users and Meta as the operator, the interests in data processing prevail. This current assessment is based, among other things, on an opinion of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) from December 2024, which the defendant has taken into account through various measures. Only publicly provided data that can also be found by search engines is to be processed. The fact that large amounts of data, also from third parties including minors, and also sensitive data within the meaning of Art. 9 GDPR, are affected does not outweigh this. Meta has taken effective measures in this respect, which significantly mitigate the interference. The planned processing was already announced in 2024. Users were informed via the apps and – where possible – by other means. They have the option of preventing data processing by changing their data to “non-public” or by objecting to it. The data used does not contain any unique identifiers such as the name, email address or postal address of individual users.
In the opinion of the Higher Regional Court of Cologne, there is also no violation of Art. 5 Para. 2 DMA upon preliminary examination in the context of the present summary proceedings. In a preliminary legal assessment, no “merging” of data takes place because Meta does not intend to combine data from user profiles from different services or from other sources with regard to a single specific user. In this respect, there is a lack of relevant case law. Due to the shortage of time in these summary proceedings, the Senate was also unable to confer with the European Commission as intended in the legal basis.
Conclusion:
The Higher Regional Court’s decision is correct both in terms of its substance and its legal policy. As the data in question is publicly accessible, there is no breach of data protection regulations. Irrespective of this, it is essential for the proper development of AI products in Germany and the European Union that publicly accessible data can also be used for AI training.
Dr. Michael Heinrich