This has the potential to be huge.
Jason Lewis reports:
The European Commission is planning to stop the way the website “eavesdrops” on its users to gather information about their political opinions, sexuality, religious beliefs – and even their whereabouts.
Using sophisticated software, the firm harvests information from people’s activities on the social networking site – whatever their individual privacy settings – and make it available to advertisers.
However, following concerns over the privacy implications of the practice, a new EC Directive, to be introduced in January, will ban such targeted advertising unless users specifically allow it.
Even though most of the information it harvests is stored on computers in the USA, if Facebook fails to comply with the new legislation it could face legal action or a massive fine.
The move threatens to damage Facebook’s plans to float on the Wall Street stock exchange next year, by undermining the way it makes money.
Read more on The Telegraph. Then contrast that to what happened here in the Fourth Circuit when a judge ruled that Twitter users gave up some of their privacy when they signed up for Twitter and accepted their TOS and privacy policy. Of course, everyone other that judge knows that no one really reads those policies, but that judge would probably rule that Facebook users have consented to have their data sold to advertisers – even if they didn’t understand or wade through Facebook’s 4000 word policy.
Will EU do for Americans’ privacy what the American Congress has failed to do and what businesses have failed to do by self-regulation? We’ll have to wait and see.
h/t, @MarieAndreeW
Update: A report by ReadWriteWeb raises some questions about what will really be proposed in the EU and how it might affect Facebook.