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Meta gave European users of Facebook and Instagram a choice between paying for a no-ads experience or keeping the services free of charge and with ads. As I discussed previously (Facebook, Instagram, “pay or consent” and necessity to fund a service and EDPB: Meta violates GDPR by personalised advertising. A “ban” or not a “ban”?), the legal reality behind that choice is more complex. Users who continue without paying are asked to consent for their data to be processed for personalized advertising. In other words, this is a “pay or consent” framework for processing first-party data.

I was asked by IAPP, “the largest privacy association in the world and a leader in the privacy industry,” to discuss this. I also thought that the text I wrote for them could use some additional explanations for this substack’s audience. What follows is an expanded version of the text published by IAPP. (If this text is too long, I suggest reading just the next section).

Read the full piece here.

Reading comments (Ben Thompson, Eric Seufert) on the Meta-Amazon deal to let “shoppers buy Amazon products directly from ads on Instagram and Facebook” (Bloomberg) made me think: could it happen here (in the EU)? Would EU law block it? I don’t think so. Still, given that the deal means “more data for Meta” (and Amazon), we’ll likely see some knee-jerk critical reactions. So, I thought it would be interesting to think through this question. (To be clear: this is not a full legal analysis, just my quick thoughts).

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Amazon against the DSA ad database duty: The new Digital Services Act (DSA) includes a duty for very large online platforms (VLOPs) to “compile and make publicly available an advertisement repository.” Amazon challenged this duty before the EU’s General Court, which made a preliminary decision to temporarily suspend the application of that duty to Amazon.

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This is a big week for Meta-related EU privacy news. On Monday, Meta announced that it would allow users to pay for ad-free versions of Facebook and Instagram. I explained what arguably went wrong in EU law to force Meta to do this in a previous newsletter. Now, the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has reportedly ruled that Meta broke EU privacy law by processing personal data for personalised advertising. See below for what I can tell so far about the new decision and for a brief overview of its background. More to follow once the EDPB decision is published.

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In July 2001, a dozen Google techies pondered their mission mantra. In essence, they aimed “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” However, their ambition was celestial. They grasped for a moniker.

The network of networks was expanding exponentially in every direction, with websites stacking up data everywhere. The informational jumble was messier than a teenager’s bedroom floor.

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The FTC—joined (unfortunately) by 17 state attorneys general—on Sept. 26 filed its much-anticipated antitrust complaint against Amazon in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Lacking all sense of irony, Deputy Director Newman, quoted above, bragged about the case’s potential to do greater good than almost all previous antitrust lawsuits.

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The Evolution of FTC Antitrust Enforcement – Highlights of Its Origins and Major Trends

1910-1914 – Creation and Launch

The election of 1912, which led to the creation of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), occurred at the apex of the Progressive Era. Since antebellum times, Grover Cleveland had been the only Democrat elected as president. But a Democratic landslide in the 1910 midterms during the Taft administration substantially reduced the Republicans’ Senate majority and gave the Democrats a huge majority in the House, signaling a major political shift. Spurred by progressive concern that Standard Oil—decided in 1911—signaled judicial leniency toward trusts and monopolies, government control of big business became the leading issue of the 1912 campaign. Both the progressive Democrats and the so-called Republican “insurgents” favored stronger antitrust laws, reduced hours and an antitrust exemption for workers, and closer federal regulation of banking and currency, among other items. Progressive agendas led both Woodrow Wilson’s “New Freedom” platform and the “New Nationalism” of former Republican President Theodore Roosevelt and his Bull Moose Party.

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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is reportedly poised some time within the next month to file a major antitrust lawsuit against Amazon—the biggest yet against the company and the latest in a long string of cases targeting U.S. tech firms (see, for example, here and here). While specific details of the suit remain largely unknown and subject to changes up to the 11th hour, according to Politico, the FTC’s multi-pronged case is likely to focus on three aspects… Read the full piece here.

Today’s judgment from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in Meta’s case (Case C-252/21) offers new insights into the complexities surrounding personalized advertising under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In the decision, in which the CJEU gave the green light to an attempt by the German competition authority (FCO) to rely on the GDPR, the court also explored the lawful bases for data processing under the GDPR, notably for personalized advertising.

Read the full piece here.