A report from the Netherlands raised privacy worries about Meta, which led the Dutch government to say that they might stop using Facebook. The Dutch Data Protection Authority told the Dutch Interior Ministry in a statement that they shouldn’t use Facebook to talk to people if they don’t fully understand how Facebook uses personal information.
The Dutch Minister for Digitalization, Alexandra van Huffelen, told Meta about their worries in a blog post. The Minister said, “The government wants Meta to make it clear as soon as possible, but no later than before the summer break, how they are going to address our concerns.” She went on, “Otherwise, we will have to stop what we’re doing on Facebook pages because that’s what the DPA told us to do.”
The privacy problem they are looking into is what happens when people visit the Facebook page of a government official and how Meta uses the information it gets from those visitors.
“If this can include information about kids and teens, that makes it even more important,” said Aleid Wolfsen, head of the Dutch DPA. They need extra safety online because they are weak.
A spokesperson for Meta said, “We review all Meta products to make sure they comply with the laws in the regions where we offer our services. We will continue to work with the Government to make sure they can use social media to communicate with people.”
Matthew Holman, an AI, tech, and privacy partner at the Cripps law firm, says that the main thing that worries the Dutch regulators is that user data “is shared with government departments on Meta’s platform and could still be subject to security issues, monitoring, or access by US federal agencies.”
