Who’s the Watchdog? In Europe, the Answer Is Complicated

Who has the right to regulate Facebook? That question lies at the heart of a growing fight after many of Europe’s privacy watchdogs opened investigations into how the social network obtains and uses individuals’ online data.

The investigations are concerned with changes in Facebook’s privacy settings, which were updated this year and simplified the often hard-to-understand rules into concise and comprehensible language. For some of Europe’s regulators, which oversee stricter data protection rules than those in the United States, the changes raised concerns that the social network did not give people enough say over how their online data was used. The watchdogs also questioned how Facebook collected information on people who visited websites other than Facebook that had embedded “like” buttons connected to the social network. At least five European regulators — France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium — are investigating Facebook’s new privacy settings.