Facebook’s massively lucrative advertising model relies on tracking its one billion users—as well as the billions on WhatsApp and Instagram—across the web and smartphone apps, collecting data on which sites and apps they visit, where they shop, what they like, and combining all that information into comprehensive user profiles
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On Thursday, Germany’s Federal Cartel Office, the country’s antitrust regulator, ruled that Facebook was exploiting consumers by requiring them to agree to this kind of data collection in order to have an account, and has prohibited the practice going forward.
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If Facebook loses the appeal, then Germany will become a grand experiment in whether the surveillance economy is actually essential to the operation of social media. Other Europeans and Americans may demand they are given the same option. “This ruling is really an icebreaker. Icebreakers break through the ice in order to lead the path for other vessels to follow,”
OK, the headline might be a bit of an overstatement, but it does seem like there is a crack in the wall of FB's walled-garden.
Will be interesting to see where it goes from here.