German Regulator: Meta Will Give Users More Account Freedom

Germany’s cartel office, the Bundeskartellamt, said Meta Platforms will give users more oversight of their accounts.

“Meta has announced plans to introduce a new accounts center,” the regular said in a Wednesday (June 7) press release. “The accounts center will allow Meta’s customers for the first time to make a largely free and informed decision about whether they want to use Meta’s services separately or in combined form.”

Users could access functionalities such as cross-posting — for example, publishing a photo to both Facebook and Instagram — although Meta would “then use the combined data for advertising purposes,” according to the release.

PYMNTS has contacted Meta for comment but has not yet received a reply. The announcement comes as Meta is battling regulators in the European Union over data privacy issues.

Last month, the company was fined a record $1.3 billion for violating Europe’s data privacy law. The fine came after the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) ruled that Meta violated Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) by failing to safeguard European Facebook users’ data from U.S. surveillance practices.

Meta is one of several tech companies that has its European headquarters in Ireland, which makes the DPC the company’s main privacy watchdog.

The fine was reportedly the largest ever handed in connection with the GDPR, exceeding an $844 million levy against Amazon in Luxembourg two years ago.

“We will appeal the ruling, including the unjustified and unnecessary fine, and seek a stay of the orders through the courts,” Meta said on its blog in May.

Aside from the fine, the DPC gave Meta until October to “suspend any future transfer of personal data to the U.S.” and six months to cease “the unlawful processing, including storage, in the U.S.” of European users’ personal data.

Meanwhile, European Commission Deputy Head Vera Jourova called on Meta and other companies this week to prevent the spread of disinformation via artificial intelligence (AI). The company, along with Microsoft and Google, had signed up to the European Union Code of Practice to combat disinformation.

“Signatories who have services with a potential to disseminate AI-generated disinformation should in turn put in place technology to recognize such content and clearly label this to users,” Jourova said.