Germany’s cartel office said on Monday it’d appeal a regional court call to suspend restrictions it had placed on Facebook’s information collection practices to the country’s highest court.
A court in Duesseldorf had earlier suspended
a February call by the Federal cartel office to order Facebook (FB.O) to limit its information collection in Germany.
“We are convinced that with the obtainable antitrust laws we can take regulatory action,” Andreas Mundt, the top of the cartel office, said in a statement. “To clarify
these queries we will file an appeal to the federal
court of Justice.”
Facebook appealed February’s landmark call by the cartel office that the world’s largest social network abused its
dominant market position to
collect info regarding users without their consent.
The Higher Regional Court in Duesseldorf said in its ruling earlier on
Monday: “The suspension of the order means Facebook doesn’t have to implement the choice of the Federal cartel office for the present
time.”
Facebook, the world’s largest social network,
declined to comment.
The court said its temporary
injunction removing restrictions on Facebook’s information gathering would be
valid till it
had created a final decision on the
company’s appeal.
Germany, where privacy considerations run
deep, is at the forefront of a
worldwide backlash against Facebook, fueled by last year’s Cambridge Analytica scandal in which tens of millions of Facebook profiles
were harvested without their
users’ consent.
The antitrust watchdog
objected above all to how Facebook pools information from third-party apps
– as well as its own
WhatsApp and Instagram – and its on-line tracking of individuals who aren’t
members through Facebook ‘like’ or ‘share’ buttons.
Last month, Facebook said it’d improve user information safeguards as a part of a settlement to resolve a U.S. government probe into its privacy practices, which resulted in a $5 billion fine.
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