Facebook in Germany is not having a good time, but the scene looks like there is a possibility that there would be a compromise on the ‘privacy concerns’. There has been a lot of drama in this case as the officials in one German state have said that those companies who use the “Like” button would be fined and the demand from the interior minister of Facebook is that the code needs to be crafted again so that they can protect privacy online. From Facebook’s end, a top official has had a meeting with the German politicians to discuss the rising privacy concerns. Facebook even said that it supports “self-regulation” to protect users’ privacy.
The ‘like’ button has been highly disliked in the German territory of late and Facebook is working hard to get things settled, which looks a ‘far-from-reality’ kind off. The problems forced top officials from Facebook flying down to Germany to discuss issues with the German politicians. It would have been a really difficult task for him as widespread criticism in Germany is the approach adopted by Facebook relating to privacy.
However, its not just the German politicians who need to be convinced, as the officials in Schleswig-Holstein state have gone to the extremes to get the ‘like’ button out of their state. Here, a regional data protection agency made an announcement that those website owners who have embed Facebook’s “Like” button would be liable to pay a fine of 50,000 euro ($70,000) as according to the authorities, the button gives lets a company track personal data of Facebook users. Across Germany, there were discussions amongst the officials were done as to the fine is to be instituted or no.
The discussion between Thilo Weichert, the Schleswig-Holstein agency’s chief and Richard Allan, a Facebook representative and director for public policy went on for more than an hour on Wednesday. The update about the discussion came to light not before Thursday as Weichert told CNN that he was “positively surprised by the meeting”. He even said that in future, further talks are possible. For the fines announced, he said that they do not plan to prosecute any specific owner as of now and the main purpose of the announcement was to get Facebook working on to reconsider their approach in regards to privacy. Weichert noted that the complaints were first received by the agency in 2010 which detailed them about Facebook’s data protection.
Allan even met Hans- Friedrich, German Interior Minister on Thursday to have a few discussions to come up with new privacy rules for social networks. Friedrich stated, “I want to establish a general code for social networks that involves rules on data protection and the protection of user identities.” A ministry spokesperson, Philipp Spauschus said that there would be further talks in future to discuss the code and will have many participants which would even include Google. Allan said that they support the initiative for self-regulation as it can be an effective way to ensure the interests of Internet users.
Germans have as it always been on their toes when it comes to privacy. Google has even faced similar problems when Street View program’s German version was launched. There were even requests from around 250,000 Germans who wished to get their houses blurred on Google’s image map.