FACEBOOK’S PARENT FIRM Meta recently threatened to pull its services from Europe amid an ongoing row over transferring European data to the United States.

User data is central to the ad business of Facebook and other social media platforms alike, so these companies are keen for a new deal to keep internet traffic flowing without facing significant legal jeopardy over European privacy laws.

The online data arrangement between Europe and the US was invalidated in July 2020 in a top EU court decision that threw transatlantic big tech into legal uncertainty. Now, officials on both sides of the Atlantic are working to finalise an agreement around the ownership of users data.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commission, responsible for much of the Big Tech regulation in Europe, ruled in August 2020 that Facebook’s method of processing European data violated the GDPR and ought to be suspended. A final decision on the DPC inquiry is to be announced in the first half of this year.

This month The Good Information Project looks at tech and the new digital age, so today we’re asking: Do you trust social media platforms with your data?

This work is also co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work is the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here.

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