In his ruling, Judge Michael Manson concludes that the privacy commissioner failed to show that the social media giant, now called Meta, failed to obtain meaningful consent from Facebook users or that it leaked their personal information not adequately protected.

A 2019 investigative report by Daniel Therrien, then the Federal Data Protection Commissioner, and his British Columbia counterpart identified serious flaws in Facebook’s procedures. They called for tougher laws to protect Canadians.

The investigation followed reports that Facebook had allowed an outside organization to use a digital app to access users’ personal information, and that data was then shared with a third party.

The app, known for a time as This is Your Digital Life, encouraged users to take a “personality quiz” but collected much more information about the people who installed the app, as well as data about their Facebook friends.

Among the recipients of this information was the British company Cambridge Analytica, which was involved in US political campaigns and targeted intelligence.

About 300,000 Facebook users worldwide added the app, leading to the potential disclosure of the personal information of about 87 million others, including more than 600,000 Canadians, according to the Privacy Commissioners of Private Life report.

The commissioners concluded that Facebook violated Canada’s privacy law by failing to collect valid and meaningful consent from users and their friends, and that it had “inadequate safeguards” to protect information from users.

Facebook disputed the findings of the investigation and refused to implement the report’s recommendations.

The company said it has tried to work with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner and take action beyond what other companies are doing.

In early 2020, Commissioner Therrien asked the Federal Court of Justice to find that Facebook violated the Private Sector Use of Personal Data Act – the Law on the Protection of Personal Data and Electronic Documents.

Facebook submits its request

In return, Facebook filed its own motion, asking the court to overturn the commissioner’s finding that the social media giant’s lax practices permitted the use of personal data for political purposes.

Facebook said the Office of the Privacy Commissioner erroneously launched a full investigation into the company’s privacy practices under the guise of investigating complaints about a specific violation of the law.

In an accompanying ruling, Judge Manson also denied Facebook’s request.

However, the judge also dismissed the privacy commissioner’s arguments about the social media company’s practices.

The commissioner had argued that Facebook failed to obtain meaningful consent from users before sharing their information with the This is Your Digital Life app.

The officer said that while Facebook has verified the existence of privacy policies and that its platform policy and terms of service require third-party apps to disclose the purposes for which the information would be used, it has not manually verified the content of those third-party policies .

The commissioner also said Facebook has not provided any evidence of what users have learned from installing the This is Your Digital Life app.

Facebook argued that its network-wide policies, user controls, and educational resources constitute a reasonable effort under Canadian law. He also criticized the commissioner’s proposal to manually review each app’s privacy policy as impractical, as it would require legal staff to review millions of documents.

Judge Manson said the court must “speculate and draw unsubstantiated conclusions from images of Facebook’s various policies and resources about what a user would or would not read, what they might find discouraging, and what they would or would not understand.”

As a result, the commissioner was unable to prove that Facebook broke the law regarding meaningful consent, he wrote.

Judge Manson also agreed with Facebook’s argument that the social media company’s protection obligations under Canadian law take effect once a user authorizes it to share information with an app.

Meta said in a statement on Monday that he was happy with the decision. “Over the past few years, we have transformed privacy at Meta, implementing one of the most comprehensive privacy programs in the world. »

Vito Pilieci, a spokesman for the Privacy Commissioner, said the office initiated the court request to protect Canadians’ privacy. “With that in mind, we are reviewing the court’s decision to determine next steps. »

Meta funds a limited number of grants that support aspiring journalists at The Canadian Press.