Facebook Bends to EU Pressure on 'Misleading' Fine Print --Update
April 09 2019 - 6:48AM
Dow Jones News
By Sam Schechner
Facebook Inc. has bowed to demands from European Union
regulators to change what the bloc had called its misleading terms
of service, the latest example of a broader effort by governments
globally to exercise more control over tech firms.
The European Commission, the EU's executive arm Tuesday said
that Facebook has agreed to address a list of outstanding concerns
that it and a group of national consumer-protection authorities had
articulated about the company's terms of service. The changes will
be made by June, the commission said.
Among the commitments the commission disclosed, Facebook will
spell out for users how it makes money by using personal
information about them to sell targeted advertising, and clarify
that it can be held liable for misuse of user data when it "has not
acted with due professional diligence."
"Today Facebook finally shows commitment to more transparency
and straightforward language in its terms of use," said Vera
Jourová, the EU's commissioner for justice, consumers and gender
equality.
Facebook said that it made the "several of the updates" as a
result of work with EU consumer-protection regulators, but would
make those changes globally.
"We've been doing a lot of work this year to better explain how
Facebook works, what data we collect and how we use it. As part of
these ongoing efforts, we'll be updating our Terms of Service to be
more clear about how Facebook makes money," said Thomas Myrup
Kristensen, Facebook's managing director of EU affairs.
Facebook's agreement to change its fine print is the latest step
in a continuing dance between tech giants and governments around
the world, as the latter try to rein in the power and alleged
shortcomings of a handful of giant technology companies -- both by
passing new laws and by tightening enforcement of existing
ones.
On Monday, the U.K. proposed a far-reaching new regulatory
framework, and independent regulator, aimed at making social media
companies like Facebook more responsible for policing the content
their users broadcast online -- from online harassment to terrorist
propaganda.
That comes on top of stiff fines for tech firms in a sweeping
new EU privacy law, GDPR, and requirements to filter for copyright
violations in a directive that will be applied over the next two
years.
The EU's executive arm has also issued fines for alleged
anticompetitive conduct by Alphabet Inc.'s Google, and ordered EU
countries to recoup allegedly unpaid taxes from Apple Inc. and
Amazon.com Inc.
Facebook has become a central focus of scrutiny in many
countries, in particular after the company has acknowledged that
its platform has been abused to spread disinformation during
election campaigns around the world. While Tuesday's commitments
relate in some ways to disclosure about Facebook's use of data,
they are distinct from the investigations the company faces in
Europe about whether it complies with the GDPR.
Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner, which is Facebook's lead
privacy regulator in Europe, because the company has its regional
headquarters in Dublin, said in February that it has opened 10
investigations into the company and its subsidiaries. The Irish
privacy regulator could make initial decisions in some of those
cases in the coming months.
Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 09, 2019 06:33 ET (10:33 GMT)
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