The top of Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, is looking at a company-wide ban on political advertising in Europe out of concern that otherwise, Facebook and Instagram will not be able to comply with future EU regulations regarding online campaigns. That writes the Financial Times Thursday.
The European Parliament backed stricter rules for political advertising in February. For example, the MEPs want to ban targeted political advertisements for young people under 16. They also do not want sensitive personal data, such as ethnic origin, religious belief or sexual orientation, to be used for these purposes. The elected officials want to limit the use of the technique to four categories of data for which the user gives explicit permission.
Under the proposed rules, US tech giants must provide more data on their targeted political advertising, with fines of up to 4 percent of their global revenue for violations.
Meta’s top is concerned that the definition of political advertising will be so broad that it will be easier to reject all paying political campaigns on the company’s websites than try to comply, the paper said with two people who know about the talks.
In December, the European Commission warned the American internet group that it abused its power to market its advertising platform Marketplace, thereby violating European competition rules.
