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

those europeans...

[clavo-t]

Those Europeans doesn't understand the right of an American company to do what they want wherever they want

Re:More info here

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like real, sudden outbreak of common sense. Go EU!. I am moving to it next year.

It should be much cheaper to move there next year.

You can opt out

[Moheeheeko]

under options>settings>some data>settings options>options settings>user data>user data settings>user data settings options>ad's data>ad's data options

Is that hard?

Re:The Internet should not be regulated

[mmcuh]

Don't use Facebook, and occasionally venture out of the basement?

Re:Best thing from the EU is the plane to NZ

[gmhowell]

I've chosen Brazil...

I'm not sure that's an improvement.