- Facebook has been clobbered with a landmark ruling in Germany that could mean huge changes to the way it collects data for 32 million users in the country.
- Germany’s antitrust regulator has told Facebook it must stop forcing users to allow it to collect and combine their data from sources outside Facebook.
- Among such sources are Facebook-owned apps like WhatsApp and Instagram as well as third-party websites that include Facebook features like the “share” button.
- Facebook says it plans to appeal the decision. The firm said it faced fierce competition in Germany and was compliant with the European Union’s privacy laws.
Germany’s antitrust regulator, the Bundeskartellamt, or Federal Cartel Office, on Thursday issued Facebook with an ultimatum: Stop hoarding people’s data.
Following an unprecedented three-year investigation involving extensive conversations with Facebook, the Bundeskartellamt issued a press statement declaring that it had “imposed on Facebook far-reaching restrictions in the processing of user data.”
It demands that Facebook — which has 32 million monthly users in Germany — change its terms and conditions so that people can explicitly stop it from hoarding data from different sources, including Facebook-owned apps like WhatsApp and Instagram as well as third-party websites with embedded Facebook tools such as “like” or “share” buttons.
The regulator says bundling users’ data together from different sources without explicit consent results in a lack of control. It also said the extent to which the social network amassed data from elsewhere was an abuse of its dominant market position.
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