‘Divorced from Reality:’ Australian Court Rejects Facebook Claim that It Doesn’t Collect Data in Country

An Australian court has rejected an appeal from Facebook attempting to overturn a ruling relating to the company’s infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal. The judge called Facebook’s argument that it doesn’t collect data on Australian users “divorced from reality,” saying: “It is not an outlier activity. It is one of the things ‘which makes Facebook work.'”

The Guardian reports that Facebook (now Meta) has lost a legal battle with Australian regulators over the company’s Cambridge Analytica scandal. An Australian court recently dismissed Facebook’s claims that it neither conducts business nor collects personal information of users in the country.

Facebook is being sued by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) for breaching the privacy of over 300,000 Australian Facebook users. The case relates to the infamous 2018 scandal in which the data analysis firm Cambridge Analytica allegedly obtained the user data of approximately 87 million users.

The OAIC announced its lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg’s company in 2020, alleging “serious and/or repeated interferences with privacy in contravention of Australian privacy law.” The OAIC aimed to sue Facebook Inc. in the U.S. and its Irish subsidiary. The Masters of the universe have attempted to have the case against it thrown out claiming that it does not collect or hold personal information in Australia so cannot be sued under Australian laws.

This argument was thrown out by the Australian court this week, describing Facebook’s case as “divorced from reality.” Justice Nye Perram said in his reasoning for the ruling:

There is a readily available inference that Facebook Inc installs cookies on devices in Australia on behalf of Facebook Ireland as part of its business of providing data processing services to it.

Further, it is clear that Facebook Ireland’s use of cookies (installed and removed by Facebook Inc) forms an important part of the operation of the Facebook platform.

It is not an outlier activity. It is one of the things ‘which makes Facebook work’.

Read more at the Guardian here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com