This will be the first time that Meta presents such a degree of selection in its cross-site tracking and user profiles. However, it’s worth noting that the festival authority isn’t entirely inspired by what Meta has invented, as it describes the up to data account center that allows Meta consumers to make “a largely inaccurate and informed resolution about whether they want to use Meta’s facilities or in combination. “(emphasis added).
“Using the facilities in combination would allow them to use additional features such as cross-posting, where a message is posted on multiple social networks, but Meta would then use the combined knowledge for advertising purposes,” the FCO also states, confirming that Meta intends to package its ad processing of users’ cross-browsing activity with a service application (cross-post). presumably, FCO’s characterization that the selection it provides to users is not entirely free. )
This might seem silly, but it’s an important legal difference since German and European Union data protection law states that if it relies on consent to process individuals’ information, an individual’s resolution to give consent will need to be informed and express (i. e. not aggregated) and delivered free of charge.
We contacted the FCO with questions.
Meta does not take this step to stimulate the selection of users in its monitoring and profiling, even in this qualified degree, of its own volition; The progression follows a long war with the German antitrust authority over the so-called “super-profiling” of users of the giant Adtech, which the FCO considers an “exploitative abuse” of its market power, as a dominant player in social media. and as an antitrust abuse opposed to the one you can trust.
In a groundbreaking February 2019 order, the FCO sought to do this by prohibiting Meta from combining users’ knowledge without their consent. However, Meta challenged the order in German courts, leading to a stay and, more recently, a referral from the European Union court.
The court is expected to issue a ruling on July 4. Therefore, Meta’s resolution to offer more options now anticipates a ruling by the CJEU that does not go in its direction. year arguing that festival approval may simply include compatibility of knowledge coverage in your festival tests, so you can see the writing on the wall here).
In an announcement accompanying the revised metaaccounts center, FCO President Andreas Mundt described the progression as “a vital milestone,” but also cautioned that “the procedure is not yet complete. “
“In 2019, we broke a new floor in festival law with our Facebook resolution, which deals with the general prohibition of abusive practices. We now see that this is a complicated path to flexible and informed resolution through users on how their knowledge is processed. however, it can be achieved,” he added.
Contacted for comment, Meta emailed this attributed to a corporate spokesperson:
We continue to make it easier and more convenient for other people to talk about and access new reports in our circle of app familiars. As part of this, we will update our Account Center to be more transparent about how our facilities work in combination and to give others more control over those reports. We will continue to work constructively with the FCO and appreciate their popularity of our ongoing work for transparency and user choice.
We anticipate that the launch of the new account medium will begin this month, and that it will be rolled out globally, not just for users in Germany. (But make no mistake, this global privacy concession was directed by the German authority. )
FCO’s press release tells how it has been running on Meta since the 2019 resolution, a procedure it says led the company to offer a half-account in the first place, the authority deemed it “seriously deficient”; adding possible options due to Meta’s manipulative design (the FCO claims that the company did not “inform consumers impartially and that all applicable data was not presented in a transparent and readily available manner”).
This followed, in February this year, after “intense” talks, when Meta presented a revised plan to put FCO’s decision into effect, adding what the authority considers a “significantly changed account center. “
“Meta made a number of adjustments to the account in the middle of the procedure, which made the user’s overall adventure much more transparent and understandable,” he explains. “Several design elements and labels were replaced, which may have led users to mix up their accounts. The wording has also been changed to explain in more detail what is actually meant (e. g. “personal data” instead of “information”); and, finally, the procedure for separating accounts has been greatly simplified.
“Although there are still possibilities for optimization, in the end it can be said that Meta consumers can now make a largely flexible and informed decision when using the account center. They will be presented with a general choice: either use all facilities separately with all core features, or use additional features across all accounts, which means sharing more non-public data,” the FCO added.
While it turns out that the regulator has (to a large extent) accepted this nuanced choice, the design of the other elements of Meta’s service remains a fear for the FCO, which also notes that “it remains to be clarified how users can be informed in the fullest possible friendly and impartial manner. “about the use and consequences of knowledge processing related to advertising equipment and meta plug-ins (e. g. Facebook login, “Like” button) in a central location and how they can consent or refuse the use of their knowledge in an undeniable way, and under what exceptional situations Under certain circumstances, cross-account knowledge processing would possibly be lawful even without users’ consent (e. g. for security reasons)”.
“Unless the required consent has been loose and informed, we will have to look for it again,” he also warns in some other play via the Meta goal.
The authority also states that the criteria underlying its 2019 Facebook ruling necessarily constitute the final word on compliance with Meta’s legal knowledge coverage, given the upcoming update to Germany’s Digital Competition Law (which the FCO showed last year applies to Meta’s business); and given an ex-ante pan-European reform of the festival that targets intermediate tech giants (also known as the Digital Markets Act; DMA) that will likely also be implemented on Meta (and which, according to the FCO, “may require stricter criteria”).
(In particular, the DMA imposes safe limits on the use of knowledge for behavioral advertising, with a blanket ban on sensitive knowledge and a ban on processing children’s knowledge for classified ads that will require additional privacy concessions from the company. )
In another warning, the FCO warns that it opposes any attempt to abuse its assessment that the media of the account passes (approximately) the meeting, and the authority writes: “It should also be noted that the valuation of the medium of the Meta account cannot be transferred to other conditions in which users make choices, since in each case it will be necessary to take into account the implications and the general context of the respective resolution of the user.
In recent months, significant enforcement of privacy through the European Union’s data coverage government has also forced Meta to reconfigure its operations and offer regional users the ability to opt out of their behavioral advertising.
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