(Frankfurt) The German competition watchdog announced Thursday a set of measures allowing users to better control the association of their data by Meta, ending a long dispute with the tech giant.
“The central aspect is that the use of Facebook no longer requires accepting unlimited collection and association of data with the user account […] “, said Andreas Mundt, president of the Federal Cartel Office, in a statement.
Users can now control the merging of their data between the group’s services and third-party sites, even for advertising purposes, without affecting the separate use of the services.
The parameters of cookies also allow you to decide whether data collected on third-party sites can be associated with Facebook or Instagram data.
Meta has also introduced notifications and guides to facilitate access to privacy settings and the merging of data for security purposes is limited in time.
These measures are already implemented or will be implemented in the coming weeks.
In February 2019, the Federal Cartel Office prohibited Meta from merging, without consent, user data from its services (such as Instagram) and third-party sites or applications.
Until now, this forced users to either accept an almost unlimited merger of data or give up using the social network.
The Federal Cartel Office banned these terms of use in 2019, a decision that Mr Mundt still considers “revolutionary”.
Meta appealed this decision, but after years of litigation and the confirmation of the principles by the Federal Court of Justice in 2020 and the Court of Justice of the EU in 2023, concrete measures were negotiated with the Federal Office cartels.
They were considered sufficiently effective for the competition authority to decide to close the procedure against Meta.
Other large tech companies, Alphabet/Google, Amazon and Apple, are under increased surveillance by the German authority, due to their dominant position in their markets, with the launch of specific investigations into their practices already taken or in the process of being.