Germany’s federal information commissioner has said it will close down all its Government Facebook pages, in fresh data row.
Last month, Ulrich Kelber wrote to government agencies “strongly recommend[ing]” they to close down their official Facebook Pages because of ongoing data protection compliance problems.
In the letter, Kelber warns the government bodies that he intends to start taking enforcement action from January 2022 — essentially giving them a deadline of next year to pull their pages from Facebook.
So expect not to see official Facebook Pages of German government bodies in the coming months.
The problem, in a nutshell, is that Facebook does not provide Pages operates with enough information or assurances about how it processes users’ data — meaning they’re unable to comply with GDPR principles of accountability and transparency because, for example, they’re unable to adequately inform followers of their Facebook Page what is being done with their data.
There is also no way for Facebook Page operators to switch off (or otherwise block) wider processing of their Page followers by Facebook.
Even if they don’t make use of any of the analytics features Facebook provides to Page operators.
The processing still happens.
This is because Facebook operates a take-it-or-leave it ‘data maximizing’ model — to feed its ad-targeting engines.
