On 7 February 2019, after almost three years of investigation, Germany's Federal Cartel Office ("FCO") issued its long awaited decision on Facebook's data collection practices. The FCO found that Facebook has a dominant position on the German market for social networks, and abused this position by making use of the Facebook social network conditional upon the user consenting to what FCO president Andreas Mundt referred to as Facebook's "practically unrestricted" collection of data from third party websites and apps (including services owned by Facebook such as WhatsApp and Instagram) and linking that data to the user's Facebook account.
The decision prohibits this conduct and orders Facebook to change its terms of service. This is an interventionist and far reaching decision: Andreas Mundt stated that "with regard to Facebook's future data processing policy, we are carrying out what can be seen as an internal divestiture of Facebook's data". The decision has not yet been published, but the FCO has issued a background paper (here) and a press release (here). Facebook has announced that it will appeal.
Read the full briefing here.
Contacts
Kyriakos Fountoukakos
Managing Partner, Competition Regulation and Trade, Brussels
Key contacts
Kyriakos Fountoukakos
Managing Partner, Competition Regulation and Trade, Brussels
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