PJW: Facebook is Violating General Data Protection Laws by Withholding Reasons for Ban

Aug 20, 2019

Journalist Paul Joseph Watson is accusing Facebook of violating European law by refusing to hand over information about why he was thrown off the monolithic social media platform earlier this year.

Watson believes that Facebook is violating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), implemented by the European Union in May 2018, with their unwillingness to comply with his request.

Facebook is REFUSING to hand over data on why it banned me. Nearly 4 months later. This is in violation of GDPR laws. They think I’m just going to drop it? I won’t. Reinstate the accounts or hand over the data.

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) August 20, 2019

They say revealing why I was banned may enable other people to avoid being banned. That’s their excuse. Pathetic. Unlawful. Hand over the data or reinstate the accounts. pic.twitter.com/TNFGRbfywr

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) August 20, 2019

Also, they already publicly revealed why I was banned (interviewing Tommy Robinson 3 years ago), so this excuse is particularly stupid.

— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) August 20, 2019

Despite Watson’s accusation, Facebook claims on its website that they are in full compliance with the GDPR.

“Data protection is central to the Facebook Companies (Facebook and Messenger, Instagram, Oculus and WhatsApp). We comply with current EU data protection law, which includes the GDPR. Our GDPR preparations were led by our Dublin-based data protection team and supported by the largest cross-functional team in Facebook’s history,” they wrote.

Despite their lip service, Facebook has already been implicated for possible violations of the GDPR throughout Europe. They are facing a potential fine of over $1 billion over their alleged abusive practices in violation of the law.

ZDNet reports:

Facebook could face potentially billions in fines under GDPR for the latest data breach which impacted roughly 50 million accounts.

The security incident, revealed last week, was caused by a vulnerability in Facebook’s code which permitted attackers to steal access tokens.

Access tokens are used to keep Facebook users logged in when they switch over to a public profile view via the “View As” feature.

The breach was detected on September 25. The vulnerability, comprising of three separate bugs, has been resolved and the access tokens of affected users have been reset, alongside an additional 40 million users that were subject to a “View As” lookup over the past 12 months.

It took mere hours before class-action lawsuits were filed against Facebook for failing to protect user data. It seems that it took only a little longer for regulators to become involved.

According to the Data Protection Commission (DPC) for Ireland, the number of affected accounts involved in the latest security incident relating to EU citizens is less than 10 percent of the total 50 million users impacted.

This works out to roughly five million users, which is still a huge number of people who may have had their data accessed or stolen.

If Watson’s interpretation of the GDPR is correct, Facebook may be in more trouble as the social media platform loses prestige and market share for its myriad of privacy violations and censorship policies.