On April 9 2019, the European Commissione wecomed the Facebook's decition to update its terms and service contitions
Facebook will complete the implementation of all commitments at the latest by the end of June 2019. The Commission and the Consumer Protection Cooperation network will closely monitor the implementation
the new terms and service contiontions will clearly explain how the company uses its users' data to develop profiling activities and target advertising to finance their company.
The new terms will detail what services, Facebook sells to third parties that are based on the use of their user's data, how consumers can close their accounts and under what reasons accounts can be disabled. These developments come after exchanges, which aimed at obtaining full disclosure of Facebook's business model in a comprehensive and plain language to users.
In the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and as a follow-up to the investigation on social media platforms in 2018, the European Commission and national consumer protection authorities requested Facebook to clearly inform consumers how the social network gets financed and what revenues are derived from the use of consumer data. They also requested the platform to bring the rest of its terms of service in line with EU Consumer Law.
As a result, Facebook will introduce new text in its Terms and Services explaining that it does not charge users for its services in return for users' agreement to share their data and to be exposed to commercial advertisements. Facebook's terms will now clearly explain that their business model relies on selling targeted advertising services to traders by using the data from the profiles of its users.
In addition, following the enforcement action, Facebook has also amended:
- its policy on limitation of liability and now acknowledges its responsibility in case of negligence, for instance in case data has been mishandled by third parties;
- its power to unilaterally change terms and conditions by limiting it to cases where the changes are reasonable also taking into account the interest of the consumer;
- the rules concerning the temporary retention of content which has been deleted by consumers. Such content can only be retained in specific cases – for instance to comply with an enforcement request by an authority – and for a maximum of 90 days in case of technical reasons;
- the language clarifying the right to appeal of users when the their content has been removed.
Retrieved from http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-19-2048_en.htm