Germany Prohibits Merging Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp User Data

[Lucian Armasu]

German's Federal Cartel Office said Facebook is a monopoly with over 95 percent of the social media market in Germany.

Germany Prohibits Merging Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp User Data : Read more

 

[husker]

Exactly how would the German government punish Facebook if they merged the data anyway? These are American companies. Lawsuit? Block Facebook from all German users? Good luck in the next elections!

 

[BulkZerker]

I'm sure if Facebook curated "hate speech" for the local PDs to comb through they'd change their tune.

 

[s1mon7]

Actually as opposed to the above comments I'm very grateful to Germany. The idea to merge Whatsapp with Instagram and Facebook would be a huge hit to our privacy and frankly would ruin a great product. The Whatsapp founder was fighting against it for years, I'm glad there is a meaningful pushback. People are leaving and criticizing Facebook, while everyone's still on Whatsapp and the fact it just works, is simple and doesn't bombard users with data (and doesn't sell users data) keep it as a very respected messenger. Merging it with Facebook would ruin it.

 

[emeralds1000000]

Exactly how would the German government punish Facebook if they merged the data anyway? These are American companies. Lawsuit? Block Facebook from all German users? Good luck in the next elections!

They wont block facebook , but they can block the ads ... all EU advertisement will be not allowed and facebook will lose alot from that.

Also they can put fines on the EU branches.

 

[hellwig]

I don't know the reasons behind keeping Whatsapp and Instagram "separate" from the main Facebook entity, but I have to think this would go away if Facebook just merged them altogether into the "Facebook experience". Whatsapp by Facebook, Instagram by Facebook. If they made it clear they were all essentially one service, I don't think the EU could stop them.

Sort of like how Google can use your YouTube and eMail and search history (and browsing history if you use Chrome or their DNS), because it's all one service with one account. Or at least, they can do that for now. You could still have a stand-alone Whatsapp (just as Google has about 20 separate IM apps, Duo, Hangouts, etc...), providing the same experience, just re-working the legal things behind the scenes.