'Dominant' Facebook hauled over coals by German competition authority A competition authority in Germany has opened proceedings against Facebook for allegedly violating data protection rules. The cartel investigator in Germany, known as the Bundeskartellamt, announced that it has launched itself at the American company, as well as its Irish and German subsidiaries, on "an initial suspicion that …
"It is difficult for users to understand and assess the scope of the agreement accepted by them. There is considerable doubt as to the admissibility of this procedure, in particular under applicable national data protection law."
"But they agreed to it! And they can always stop using Facebook if they want! And anyway, we're not based in your country so you can't touch us!"
(Just setting up a few squares for a new game of Bull$hit Bingo!)
Are the Germans now going to use that argument against Microsoft and their un-agreed win 10 data slurp? If not, why not?
Oh, that will happen. One thing at a time - Facebook has been around for a bit too, but only changed its Terms as per 1Jan last year, so that gives you some idea of timeline..
Yes that's right, dominant. There's no need for the scare quotes because it's a well known aspect of European Union competition law, which can occur with less than 40% market share.
"[dominance creates] a special responsibility not to allow its conduct to impair competition on the common market"
This confuses the yanks no end. This simple misunderstanding has probably spawned millions of forum posts, but we quite rightly have much stricter laws restricting monopolies. It's high time Facebook gets an anti-monopoly boot up its arse. (And a completely unrelated privacy boot up its other arse).
Faecebook wants to own the internet and become the de facto web. Faecebook are far worse than anything Microsoft, Apple or Google are doing, how many people who are quick to get sanctimonious about that evil triumvirate are keeping a Faecebook account and posting puerile rubbish on their wall every day?
We don't need to click "like" on somebody's breakfast pic. Dump them and dump them now. When it dies its useful functionality can be replaced by something distributed that will work together with peer services in the same way that email does. So we can make a choice to use system A, and that information can be shared with other people who choose to use system B, or C or whatever.
With Faecebook dominant we have the unhealthy situation of on corporation attempting to own something that would be better for all of us if it were spread.
And don't be taken in by their fake altruism BS either.
"It's high time Facebook gets an anti-monopoly boot up its arse. (And a completely unrelated privacy boot up its other arse)."
I see them more as two halves of a single operation - like hammer & anvil. The privacy charge could be evaded on the basis of "they agreed" and the agreement argument gets nixed by "no they didn't because of the monopoly".
It's high time Facebook gets an anti-monopoly boot up its arse. (And a completely unrelated privacy boot up its other arse).
This is for me the first time I have ever seen Facebook described as double-arsed, which opens up a whole new universe of arseholery (to paraphrase comedian Ed Byrne about planning his wedding).
From the Bundeskartellamt's press release:
"The Bundeskartellamt is conducting the proceeding in close contact with the competent data protection officers, consumer protection associations as well as the European Commission and the competition authorities of the other EU Member States."
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