Meta has provided new details on how it plans to respond to new competition rules in the European Union that aim to tackle abusive behavior by big tech companies by imposing fairer deals on a handful of the world's most powerful platforms.
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) applies to only six (mostly American) tech giants, including Meta.
In September, the EU designated Meta as a so-called “gatekeeper,” listing six of its products as “core platform services” under the DMA, namely: its social networks, Facebook and Instagram; your ad delivery system; its messaging services, WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger; and its virtual marketplace platform, Marketplace. Although the rules may apply more broadly to other services offered by gatekeepers, not just the named services.
The DMA generally places limits on how gatekeepers can operate, including (of great relevance here) restricting their ability to process user data for advertising (and the regulation stipulates that they must obtain consent for this).
The law also says that gatekeepers must not combine user data between services on their main platform or with user data from any other services that gatekeepers provide or with personal data provided by third parties, unless they provide users with a “specific choice” and obtain your consent.
The deadline for guardians to comply with the DMA is March 7; hence the social media giant is busy working on adjustments to its services in the region.
in a blog entry Today, Meta writes that “soon” (over the “coming weeks”) it will begin sending notifications to users in the region where the law applies (i.e.: EU countries, the European Economic Area and/or Switzerland) offering them more choice about how they can use your services, including the ability to prevent Meta from combining data about your Facebook usage and your Instagram usage.
This is important, as it could effectively reverse a factor that motivated Facebook to spend $1 billion to purchase Instagram in the first place, back in 2012: increasing its visibility into social media user activity and deepening its ability to profile people's interests. to target them with ads, buying a key rival and gaining access to Instagram user data.
Users of Meta's dominant social networks will be able to take advantage of this account separation option through the existing one. Account Center characteristic.
“We are offering these options to address the requirements of the DMA, which will go into effect in March 2024,” Meta writes, suggesting that the options will not be active until the deadline for DMA compliance begins to pass in early March.
The incoming options will also allow regional Facebook Messenger users to prevent Meta from combining their data with their social network usage. Although Messenger users who want to protect their use of Meta products will have to create a new, separate Messenger account, which could create some friction to discourage people from taking the step of protecting their messaging activity from the networks public social.
For users of Meta's Marketplace buying/selling platform, there will also be a new option that you can exercise that will separate your Marketplace activity from your Facebook account, but anyone who chooses this option will be penalized and will no longer be able to use Facebook Messenger. for communications. between buyers/sellers; They will only be able to use email, according to Meta's blog post.
Meta has come up with another notable hurdle to prevent Facebook Gaming users from choosing not to link their gaming activity to the broader use of their social network: No access to social gaming.
“People who choose to use their Facebook information for the games they play on Facebook will have features such as multiplayer games, in-game purchases, and personalized game suggestions. “People who choose not to use their Facebook information for the games they play on Facebook can play some single-player games,” she writes.
The ad tech giant's blog post also reiterates a change it already made in the region, related to its tracking-based advertising: when, in November, it launched an ad-free subscription. This is the only alternative that Meta currently offers to EU users who do not want it to process their information to serve tracking ads.
The “Hobson's choice” designed here – that is, “pay us or accept tracking” – is already being challenged under the block's privacy rules. And it remains to be seen whether EU data protection regulators will accept it. Although doubts about legality have not stopped Meta, in the meantime, from forcing European users to choose.
But the DMA is also relevant here, as the new regulation explicitly obliges gatekeepers to ensure that consent is “as easy to withdraw… as it is to give.” This means that the Commission, which oversees compliance with the DMA, may have the power to accelerate the crackdown on Meta's latest version of forced consent in the EU, if EU regulators decide that Meta will require users to pay Not being tracked is not that easy. such as that Meta allows users to press a button to accept their tracking (and therefore that the choice that Meta has designed violates the DMA).
It's safe to say that EU privacy advocates will be watching what the Commission does here.
“Gatekeepers must not design, organize or operate their online interfaces in a manner that deceives, manipulates or otherwise distorts or materially impairs the ability of end users to freely give their consent,” the recitals also read. of the WFD, words that may have additional relevance for the Commission. evaluation of other options that Meta has designed and is announcing today, which could risk manipulating users into agreeing to have their data combined, that is, since Meta intends to retain some (attractive) features unless that they agree.
“In particular, gatekeepers should not be permitted to ask end users more than once a year to provide consent for the same processing purpose for which they initially did not provide consent or withdrew consent,” the regulation further stipulates.
That means Meta won't be able to bother users about these same options until 2025. But if the design of the options is unfair from the start, Meta could buy more time to continue profiling Europeans, despite a flagship competition from the EU. reform that aims to prevent technology giants from using their market dominance to force their users to accept profiling.
Violations of the regime, which is supervised by the European Commission itself, can lead to fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover (or billions of euros each), so the consequences of violating these rules are sufficiently important enough that big tech companies can't just ignore them. However, it seems likely that an attempt will be made to see to what extent the platform giants can test their luck with regulators and minimize any concessions they make.
In fact, Meta may be setting the pace here. (But it is the Commission that will set the tone, through the application of the WFD).
The quality of user consent referred to in the DMA is regulated by another (older) EU law called the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Under the GDPR, consent must be informed, specific (separate), and freely given to be valid. And the options that Meta has defined and presents today will ultimately have to be evaluated against that standard. So, for example, it will be up to EU regulators to decide whether an option under which users are retained from playing Facebook games with their friends unless they agree that cross-site tracking and profiling of their activity on its platforms by Meta meets the requirements The GDPR prohibits whether consent is “freely given” or not.
An ex ante reform of the digital competition law in Germany already led Meta to make some concessions on cross-site tracking last June. But where German law is national, the DMA applies across the EU, EEA and Switzerland, so EU regulation is expected to play a larger role in reshaping the platform's power.