Meta—and many other Big Tech firms—just got an unwelcome Independence Day surprise, after the European Union’s top court blew up the legal basis for the Facebook owner's core business model of targeted advertising.
The direct result of the ruling will likely be a German ban on Meta’s customary combination of user data from its WhatsApp and Instagram platform—and data derived from tracking people as they visit third-party websites—with users’ Facebook data, to provide personalized advertising on the company’s longest-running social network.
