German Regulators Just Outlawed Facebook’s Whole Ad Business

“Facebook will no longer be allowed to force its users to agree to the practically unrestricted collection and assigning of non-Facebook data to their Facebook user accounts,” FCO president Andreas Mundt said in a statement announcing the decision. The FCO further argues that Facebook used its vast data collection to build up its market dominance, creating a feedback loop wherein people have no choice but to use the site and allow it to track them, which makes the site even more dominant and entrenches its privacy violations. The FCO’s ruling, however, directly addresses the GDPR, writing that under its principles Facebook has “no effective justification for collecting data from other company-owned services and Facebook Business Tools or for assigning these data to the Facebook user accounts.”

Source: www.wired.com