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Germany's Federal Cartel Office Claims Facebook 'Extorts' Personal Data From Users (independent.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent: Germany's Federal Cartel Office is examining whether Facebook essentially takes advantage of its popularity to bully users into agreeing to terms and conditions they might not understand. The details that users provide help generate the targeted ads that make the company so rich. In the eyes of the Cartel Office, Facebook is "extorting" information from its users, said Frederik Wiemer, a lawyer at Heuking Kuhn Lueer Wojtek in Hamburg. "Whoever doesn't agree to the data use, gets locked out of the social network community," he said. "The fear of social isolation is exploited to get access to the complete surfing activities of users." Andreas Mundt, the Cartel Office's president, said last week he's "eager to present first results" of the Facebook investigation this year. Like the EU's Google investigation, he said the Facebook case tackles "central questions ensuring competition in the digital world in the future".
I'm not understanding the problem?
Instead of being bullied, why don't those German users just use one of the incredibly popular German social media sites coming out of Germany's equivalent of Silicon Valley, and their thriving venture capital sector, and startup company friendly tax laws?
Oh. Wait. Germany. Where Spotify is illegal because they aren't paying the BMG tax on songs not recorded either in Germany or by David Hasselhoff, but which you have to pay anyway.
Never mind.