META Meta Platforms Inc

By Sam Schechner 

Facebook Inc. has bowed to demands from European Union regulators to change what the bloc had called its misleading terms of service, the latest example of a broader effort by governments globally to exercise more control over tech firms.

The European Commission, the EU's executive arm Tuesday said that Facebook has agreed to address a list of outstanding concerns that it and a group of national consumer-protection authorities had articulated about the company's terms of service. The changes will be made by June, the commission said.

Among the commitments the commission disclosed, Facebook will spell out for users how it makes money by using personal information about them to sell targeted advertising, and clarify that it can be held liable for misuse of user data when it "has not acted with due professional diligence."

"Today Facebook finally shows commitment to more transparency and straightforward language in its terms of use," said Vera Jourová, the EU's commissioner for justice, consumers and gender equality.

Facebook said that it made the "several of the updates" as a result of work with EU consumer-protection regulators, but would make those changes globally.

"We've been doing a lot of work this year to better explain how Facebook works, what data we collect and how we use it. As part of these ongoing efforts, we'll be updating our Terms of Service to be more clear about how Facebook makes money," said Thomas Myrup Kristensen, Facebook's managing director of EU affairs.

Facebook's agreement to change its fine print is the latest step in a continuing dance between tech giants and governments around the world, as the latter try to rein in the power and alleged shortcomings of a handful of giant technology companies -- both by passing new laws and by tightening enforcement of existing ones.

On Monday, the U.K. proposed a far-reaching new regulatory framework, and independent regulator, aimed at making social media companies like Facebook more responsible for policing the content their users broadcast online -- from online harassment to terrorist propaganda.

That comes on top of stiff fines for tech firms in a sweeping new EU privacy law, GDPR, and requirements to filter for copyright violations in a directive that will be applied over the next two years.

The EU's executive arm has also issued fines for alleged anticompetitive conduct by Alphabet Inc.'s Google, and ordered EU countries to recoup allegedly unpaid taxes from Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.

Facebook has become a central focus of scrutiny in many countries, in particular after the company has acknowledged that its platform has been abused to spread disinformation during election campaigns around the world. While Tuesday's commitments relate in some ways to disclosure about Facebook's use of data, they are distinct from the investigations the company faces in Europe about whether it complies with the GDPR.

Ireland's Data Protection Commissioner, which is Facebook's lead privacy regulator in Europe, because the company has its regional headquarters in Dublin, said in February that it has opened 10 investigations into the company and its subsidiaries. The Irish privacy regulator could make initial decisions in some of those cases in the coming months.

Write to Sam Schechner at sam.schechner@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 09, 2019 06:33 ET (10:33 GMT)

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