The German Federal Data Protection Commissioner (BfDI) has charged the German Federal Press Office (BPA) with Decision from 17.2.2023 instructed to continue the operation of the Facebook fan page of the federal government to be discontinued. Investigations by the BfDI and a Brief Opinion of the Data Protection Conference (DSK) of 18.3.2023 had shown that a data protection-compliant operation of a fan page was “currently impossible due to the extensive processing of personal data of the users” (Media release). The brief expert opinion had come to the conclusion,
There is no effective legal basis for the storage of information in the end user’s terminal equipment and access to information already stored in the terminal equipment when a fan page is visited, or for the processing of personal data for which page operators are responsible. Furthermore, the information requirements of Article 13 of the GDPR are not fulfilled.
The German government has filed a lawsuit against this decision – the aim is to create legal clarity for the operation of Facebook pages in a kind of test case. It is the opinion “that Facebook alone is responsible for its data processing under data protection law and, to that extent, questions of data protection law are to be clarified solely in relation to Facebook” (according to the Reporting of the FAZ).