EU Targets Facebook's Ad System

redletterdave writes "The European Commission plans to put a stop to the way Facebook gathers information about its users, including their political opinions, religious beliefs, whereabouts and sexual preferences, and how the social network sells that information for commercial purposes. A new EC Directive aims to ban targeted advertising unless users specifically allow it, and to amend the current European data protection laws to ensure consistency in how offending sites are dealt with across the EU. If the European Commission has its way, Facebook would suffer big losses in advertising dollars that fund its site, which would further damage the company's plans to go public next year. Facebook has defended itself, claiming its advertisers target wide demographics like age and location, rather than specific individuals. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company denies outright that it misuses or mishandles user information."

Comments

Best thing from the EU is the plane to NZ

[SleepyJohn]

If you study carefully what is really happening in the EU you will realise that their economic crisis is an essential and cleverly engineered part of a much bigger, and more worrying plan. And the reason the British object so vociferously to the EU can be clearly seen in the current disgraceful goings-on in Greece and Italy. If the British Prime Minister were turfed out of office by the unelected Commissars of the EU and replaced by one of their card-carrying stooges I suspect there would be blood in the streets. And rightly so.

The EU is not a kindly old uncle looking after the people, it is a totalitarian state, increasingly controlled by Germany, that subjugates the masses with bureaucracy and bullshit rather than bombs and bullets. It has never been given a mandate by the people to govern, yet it does so with an autocratic arrogance that is quite breathtaking to those who have lived in it. It is controlled by a self-anointed European political elite who have never been elected by the people, who are in no way, shape or form accountable to the people, and who are building a rigidly centralised, dictatorial superstate for the sole purpose of boosting their own importance and power in the world; and they are using the people as economic cannon-fodder. The only good thing to come out of the EU is a one-way flight to New Zealand.