The European Union (EU) has issued both Facebook and Twitter an ultimatum. The two social media giants are to update their “confusing” terms of services, or prepare to suffer sanctions in Europe.
The ultimatum was made by EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova, who said that both social media platforms needed to comply with the rules set forth by the General Data Protection Regulations, or GPDR for short. According to her recent Twitter post, she singled out Facebook. Citing that due to its terms of services, the social media giant was routinely giving out its user data to third party sources, and that it also “holds full copyright about any picture or content” that gets uploaded to the site.
I want #Facebook to be extremely clear to its users about how their service operates and makes money. Not many people know that #Facebook has made available their data to third parties or that for instance it holds full copyright about any picture or content you put on it.
— Věra Jourová (@VeraJourova) September 20, 2018
In particular, Facebook has come under fire since before the implementation of the GPDR. The US-based company was first instructed by the EU back to change its revamp its terms of services back in March 2017. The deadline for doing so had reportedly ended seven months ago, which was February this year.
In fairness, Facebook did actually change its terms and service in May this year, stating that its actions reflected “the vast majority” of changes requested by EU regulators. However, the latter begged to differ, citing that it still remains problematic. For now, both Facebook and Twitter have until the end of year to make changes that are fully in accordance with EU law, or suffer the consequences.
(Sources: Internations Business Times, The Guardian, DW, Reuters)
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