EU ads about child protection excluded Sinn Féin supporters

Targeted Twitter ads promoting the scanning of EU citizens' electronic devices excluded people interested in far-right groups such as AfD — but also Ireland's most popular party

The ad campaign on Twitter/X excluded people whose profiles suggested an interest in Sinn Féin, as well as far-right groups such as Germany’s  AfD and the English Defence League. Stock picture

Sinn Féin  says it is up to the European Commission to explain why it excluded the party’s followers from advertisements for a new regulation aimed at stamping out the sharing of child sexual abuse material.

The targeted advertising campaign which ran in late September on X, formerly Twitter, excluded people of specific political persuasions, including those interested in Sinn Féin.

The campaign was aimed at the promotion of a controversial new regulation which would enable indiscriminate scanning of electronic devices and online platforms for child sexual abuse material.

The European Center for Digital Rights has lodged a complaint about the ads, saying they violated citizens' rights, as the campaign was based on consumers’ political beliefs — a protected form of personal data under GDPR. Picture: Twitter/X

The campaign was promoted one day after the proposal failed to get sufficient support for its passage at the European Council.

Asked about Sinn Féin’s followers being excluded from the campaign, a party spokesperson said: “It is a matter for the European Commission to answer questions about their advertising.” They added:

Sinn Féin supports measures to protect children from abuse and supports proposals to make providers meet their obligations in this regard. 

Other parties’ followers who were excluded include supporters of Germany’s far-right AfD party and the English Defence League, and people interested in right-wing political figures such as Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and French politician Marine Le Pen.

The commission has been contacted for comment on this matter.

The ad campaign itself saw promoted tweets sent from the EU’s home affairs X account featuring text and video and containing messages such as “abusers hide behind screens while children suffer in silence”.

Ireland, one of the EU nations in favour of the controversial regulation, was not among the countries individually targeted by the campaign.

GDPR complaint lodged

In the wake of the X campaign, the European Center for Digital Rights, NOYB, lodged a complaint with the commission claiming that the advertisements violated the rights of those who had viewed them, in that the campaign was based on consumers’ political beliefs — a protected form of personal data under GDPR.

The draft regulation is currently in stasis, as EU states have not reached consensus on what it aims to achieve. A new vote on the matter is unlikely to happen before the end of this year, meaning any law would be unlikely to be enacted before the next round of European elections in June.

While the Irish Government has argued in favour of the plans to scan smartphone apps, the proposal met some resistance at the Oireachtas justice committee. Committee members expressed concerns regarding what was on the table and a political proposal in response was sent to the EU institutions from the committee last March.

Criticism of proposed regulation 

Last summer, a group of scientists and researchers sharply criticised the draft regulation saying that it was “doomed to be ineffective”.

The law would allow the scanning of messages, emails, voicemails, pictures, and other phone data and would seek to overcome end-to-end encryption, used by messaging apps such as Whatsapp, by enabling scanning directly within a person’s own device.

Critics of the proposal argued such material is easily hidden by perpetrators who can simply alter the code of the material in question, while innocent data such pictures of children shared in family groups can easily be mistaken for illegal content.