Germany Is Putting Facebook Through the Rounds
By Ryan P. K. Brown
Things do not bode well for Facebook in Germany. The country’s government has been stepping up its enforcement of user-protective laws against Facebook’s data collection practices. User-friendly EU privacy laws are already much more restrictive on how websites can use and collect user data than in the United States as they stand. But within less than a two-week period of time, Germany has pushed back three separate times against Facebook’s data collection and use policy, each through a different means of restriction.
In late February of this year, the social media giant was fined 100,000 euros for failing to amend its terms of service to in compliance with a 2012 order to fit within the narrowly tailored laws of the European Union that protect user data. After the fine was issued in court, Facebook agreed to change its terms of service in order to comply and said it was going to pay the fine. Obviously, this sum of money is not much of a blow to the media giant’s massive bank account, but this is but one manner in which the German government has warned Facebook of its data collection and use policies.
The next warning came on March 2 of this year. The German Federal Cartel Office (FCO), Germany’s competition watchdog, issued a statement claiming that Facebook may be using its dominant marketing position in order to violate user data privacy laws. The FCO announced that it is conducting an investigation into the terms of use of Facebook’s social media services. They are particularly concerned that Facebook is abusing its dominance in the social media market in order to conduct illegal and unethical data use and collection practices.
Finally, media outlets reported that this past Wednesday, March 9, a German court ruled that Facebook’s “like” button may actually be in violation of law if clicked on commercial websites. The court specifically pointed out that the violation occurred when users were not notified that their data may be shared if they clicked a “like” button on a commercial website. In this decision, the court warned that they could fine the commercial websites for hosting the “like” button who lack any notice of how a user’s data may be shared. This warning was not directly aimed at Facebook, but the implications for the social media company—i.e. increasing the friction of data collection and use—are clear.
Obviously these fines, rulings and investigations are not, individually, much of a threat to Facebook as the social media giant that it is, but the path that Germany appears to be treading could lead to long-term difficulties and power shifting. EU law is already much more user- and consumer-friendly than the United States’. This tightening of the grip, so to speak, on Facebook is an indication of further measures the German government is willing to take to further protect users.