The Federal Cartel Office in Germany may order Facebook to take action
to address concerns regarding its use of data gathered without
consumers’ consent if the company fails to do so voluntarily, according
to Reuters’ report.
“We are conscious that this should, and
must, go quickly,” the president of the watchdog, Andreas Mundt, said,
adding he hoped to take “first steps” regarding this in coming months.
While it is unclear what these steps will be, they are more likely to
include some kind of action rather than a fine.
In a preliminary assessment of the
social network in 2017, the cartel office determined Facebook is abusing
its dominant position and making the use of its platform “conditional
on its being allowed to limitlessly amass every kind of data generated
by using third-party websites and merge it with the user’s Facebook
account.”
It added these third-party sites include services owned by Facebook such as WhatsApp and Instagram.
The cartel office is also looking into
whether new features introduced by Facebook such as a “clear history”
option “affects our investigation and addresses our concerns,” Mundt
said.
Facebook has been on the hot seat ever
since the Cambridge Analytica incident, which forced it to suspend more
than 400 apps following an audit of services designed to detect misuse
of user data.
Last month Germany’s telecoms regulator
Bundesnetzagentur said United States (US) technology giants including
Google and Facebook which provide messaging and email services, should
be regulated in the same way as telecommunications companies.
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