Morning traffic outside Meta head office, in Mountain View, California, U.S. November 9, 2022.
Peter Dasilva|Reuters
The Dutch federal government stated Friday that it might be required to stop utilizing Facebook after a caution from the Netherlands’ personal privacy regulator about the Meta– owned social networks platform’s personal privacy dangers.
The Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA) provided a declaration encouraging the Dutch Interior Ministry not to depend on Facebook pages to interact with people if it does not have a clear concept of how Facebook utilizes the individual information of individuals who go to federal government pages.
The Interior Ministry had actually formerly asked the DPA to recommend on whether the federal government might utilize Facebook pages in a certified method.
The federal government desires clearness from Meta “as soon as possible, at the latest before the summer recess, on how they are addressing our concerns,” Alexandra van Huffelen, the Dutch Minister for Digitalization, stated in a declaration.
“Otherwise, in line with the advice of the DPA, we will be forced to stop our activities on Facebook pages,” she included.
The Dutch DPA’s chairman, Aleid Wolfsen, stated in a declaration that “people who visit a government page trust that their personal and sensitive information is in safe hands.”
“The fact that this can also involve information about children and young people makes this even more important. They are vulnerable online and need extra protection,” Wolfsen stated in the declaration, which was equated to English through Google Translate.
A Meta representative informed CNBC: “We fundamentally disagree with the assessment that underpins this advice, which is wrong on the facts and demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding as to how our products work.”
“We review all Meta products to ensure they comply with laws in the regions in which we offer our services, and will continue to engage with the Government to ensure they can use social media to communicate with people,” the Meta representative included.
The DPA recommendations functions as additional proof of “growing distrust between European regulators and Meta,” Matthew Holman, a tech, personal privacy, and AI partner at law practice Cripps, informed CNBC through e-mail.
Holman stated that the Dutch regulator’s issue is most likely to be that user information “is shared with government departments on Meta’s platform and could still be subject to security issues, monitoring or access by US federal agencies.”
– CNBC’s April Roach added to this report
