On Thursday, Germany’s Federal Cartel Office, the country’s antitrust regulator, ruled that Facebook was exploiting consumers by requiring them to agree to this kind of data collection in order to have an account, and has prohibited the practice going forward.
“Facebook will no longer be allowed to force its users to agree to the practically unrestricted collection and assigning of non-Facebook data to their Facebook user accounts,” FCO president Andreas Mundt said in a statement announcing the decision.
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Super! thanks, Purtle
Very eager to see how this will play out!
Me too. Can Facebook fight this in court?
They’ll appeal for sure. I think they have a week to appeal the decision? Not sure but I’ll keep an eye on it and post here if I see anything.
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I know nothing about German courts and legislation, what are their chances of overturning this?
Well, the whole world has been a witness for a while how Facebook has constantly been charged with various unauthorized data collection lawsuits so this is not something new. It’s a public secret that Facebook is indeed gathering all kinds of personal data and breaches most of the confidential policies so I think it’s time to face the consequences.
True. Them having access to children’s data without any kind of proper parental consent and oversight was the tipping point for me.
Exactly, and this data was not protected at all. The minimum age for registering was too low as well, I don’t know if they changed that. The whole idea of Facebook has been extremely corrupted over the past years so it’s time for some major transformation.
True. I doubt they’d try to do that while still having major profits. 
Thanks for the info
I think the social media platforms earn money through the ad services and we must have to allow them to do so. Social media like Facebook are giving us too much ease and we have to bear ads for the betterment of the social media platforms. Money matters everywhere!