DThe problematic side seems inconspicuous: A large portrait photo, the Hessian state coat of arms, next to it a quote from the person pictured: “The Darknet is actually a bit empty, it’s relatively little used.” A YouTube video is linked under the post below, with Recordings from the Frankfurt Communications Museum and an event notice.
These and similar posts can be found on the Facebook page of the Hessian state center for political education. Posting four to five times a week, it is one of the more active state authorities on the social network Facebook, which has 31 million users in Germany. Many public bodies in Hesse have set up so-called Facebook fan pages to publish information or refer to events.
Collection of User Data
But that has to end, says the Hessian data protection officer Alexander Roßnagel. “Facebook fan pages are increasingly being used to convey government information,” says Roßnagel. Because Facebook has serious data protection problems, he calls on all state authorities to switch off their Facebook pages immediately.
Facebook uses cookies and similar technologies to collect data from all visitors to the pages of the state authorities – regardless of whether the users even have a Facebook account, criticizes the lawyer. Facebook creates user profiles from this collected data in order to be able to place profitable individualized advertising. Even visiting a few Facebook pages allows conclusions to be drawn about age and gender, but also about personal taste or sexual orientation or political views.
At the latest since the judgment of the Schleswig Higher Administrative Court of November 25 last year, it has been legally established that “the operation of a page on Facebook represents a ‘serious breach of data protection law’,” says Roßnagel. He also refers to a short report by the “Facebook Fan Pages” task force of the conference of federal and state data protection supervisory authorities. The judgments show that the data protection responsibility for the pages does not lie solely with Facebook, but also with the operators of the pages.
Disinformation campaigns and fake news
How many public bodies in Hesse actually operate their own fan pages is currently not known: “After a first sighting, there are not exactly a few,” said Roßnagel. While some state authorities, such as the Hessian state representation in Brussels, operate Facebook pages but only share content through links from other Facebook users, other state authorities are much more active.
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