EU Governments Could Ditch Facebook Platform Over Poor Data Handling

The Dutch government will stop using Facebook if private data handling is not improved.

In a recent letter to Parliament, State Secretary Alexandra van Huffelen said that the personal data of users visiting Dutch government Facebook pages is not adequately processed by Meta to comply with privacy laws.

“If the risks are insufficiently eliminated, there is no other option than to stop using government Facebook pages,” she noted in the letter.

Van Huffelen’s concerns reflect broader sentiment in the EU, where Meta’s practice of exporting data to the U.S. has long been viewed with suspicion. The matter has only been compounded since the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) struck down the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield data-sharing agreement in July 2020.

Learn more: Big Techs Continue to Navigate Legal Quagmire of EU Data Sovereignty

In that CJEU ruling, the judge found that the U.S. offered insufficient assurances that EU citizens’ personal data would be protected from intelligence agency snooping without a warrant as mandated by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

For Meta, ever since the Privacy Shield was nullified last year, the company’s practice of sending user data to the U.S. for processing has been the subject of regulatory scrutiny. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), which is responsible for supervising the Big Tech firm, has issued repeated warnings about Meta’s data handling, leaving its EU business model teetering in the balance.

And while a DPC order to forcefully block Meta’s data exporting may have been stalled for the time being, EU governments and public sector organizations aren’t waiting around to impose their own Facebook moratoriums.

Leading the pack, many of Germany’s government organizations have already shut down their Facebook pages following instructions from the Federal Data Protection Commissioner, Ulrich Kelber.

In her letter to Parliament, van Huffelen cites the German instance and issues that have arisen from it.

While she explained that she is in dialogue with Meta about how it can alleviate privacy concerns, she also stated that her department is exploring alternative means of communicating with the public and looking into how government organizations in the Netherlands could best extricate themselves from Meta platforms.

In order for the Dutch government to be confident that its use of Facebook is compliant with GDPR, van Huffelen has requested Meta to stop storing data gathered when users in the Netherlands view government Facebook pages in the U.S.. She also asked that data be deleted no more than a week after it’s collected.

Meta’s Ongoing GDPR Predicament

To add to Meta’s EU data protection headache, on Monday (Nov. 28) the company was slapped with a €265 million ($278.8 million) fine over a major data breach that resulted in the details of 533 million users being published online.

With the latest penalty, the DPC has levied nearly €1 billion in fines against Meta since last September, including €405 million ($426.1 million) for letting teenagers set up Instagram accounts that publicly displayed their contact details, €17 million ($17.8 million) for a previous Facebook data breach, and €225 million ($236.7 million) for WhatsApp failing to meet GDPR transparency obligations.

Worse still for the firm, last week it was reported that hacked user information is again available for sale online, this time constituting a database of 487 million WhatsApp user mobile numbers, including many from EU countries.

With multiple sources verifying that the stolen numbers refer to actual compromised account data, another GDPR fine may well be on the horizon for Meta.

Between the still unresolved transatlantic data sharing issue and a series of high-profile data breaches, Germany and the Netherlands may not be the only EU governments to start boycotting Meta’s platforms over privacy concerns.

In the meantime, several EU politicians have extolled the virtues of life without Facebook.

“After being hacked, I’ve lived without Facebook and Twitter for four years and life has been fantastic,” German Economy Minister Robert Habeck told reporters at a conference in February.

His French counterpart Bruno Le Maire has also shared similar sentiments: “I can confirm that life is very good without Facebook and that we would live very well without [it].”

See more: EU Seeks To Strengthen ‘Digital Sovereignty’, Unfazed By Meta Threat To Withdraw From Region

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