Facebook’s ‘Like’ Button Illegal and Banned in Germany

Not everyone is a fan of Facebook’s “Like” button: in Germany, for example, it will soon be banned.
All sites operating within the territory of the Schleswig-Holstein region will indeed have to hurry to remove the Facebook plugin, under penalty of particularly hefty fines that could reach approximately 50,000 euros for each infraction found.
The data protection officer of the “Independent Center for Data Protection” of this district has, in fact, deemed the use of the “Like” button on websites detrimental to the privacy of users who, perhaps partly unknowingly, might not fully realize that expressing a preference via Facebook could mark a sort of “trace” of their personal activities.
A social map potentially accessible also by the websites themselves, as well as by Facebook.
The presence of the “Like” plugin and the fact that users are tracked for two years after that very quick click become a mix of factors that contravene current German laws, specifically the “Telemedia Act“.
Another factor under scrutiny is the transfer of such data to databases located in the United States, and therefore outside local jurisdiction.
Not only that, but data protection officer Thilo Weichert points out that both German and European data protection regulations are implicated in this issue.
While Facebook declares that everything is carried out in full compliance with EU privacy regulations, the measure does not seem to have been well-received at the moment, neither by websites nor by the social media community: protests are rampant, but – as it stands – the measure will come into effect in the coming days, thus obliging the managers of the affected sites to comply. Otherwise, they will have to proceed with paying significant fines.