Most tech companies know about you when you visit their websites or use their apps. Some however, like Facebook, know about you on virtually every important site on the planet ... and the majority of top apps as well.
But the European Union just threatened that massive data source.
Photo Taken In Vilnius, Lithuania
Facebook has an invisible web of data connectors reaching to more than 8.4 million websites and thousands, if not millions of apps. If you visit WhiteHouse.gov, for instance, Facebook knows. If you use Walgreen's mobile app, Facebook has its technology embedded there too.
This invisible web is critical to Facebook.
It tells Facebook what interests you. What you like. Where you go online, and what apps you use. It tells Facebook a lot about what products you might be interested in, and sometimes details about what you might purchase.
This is all critical information for a company that makes its money selling ads.
These invisible data connectors are the Facebook Like button — which more than 8.4 million websites use — and Facebook SDKs (software development kits) that are embedded into 67% of the top iOS apps and 66% of the top Android apps. Including, by the way, Tinder.
Just yesterday, the European Union's top court said that, according to the GDPR privacy laws, websites need to ask their visitors before sending data to Facebook — the invisible-to-users data that tells Facebook that you visited a site and potentially much more, depending on how it was configured.
If that stands, every site with the Like button, and potentially every app with the Facebook SDK, would have to get your consent before even loading the Like button on the page, since that very act gives Facebook data on your activity, and, in many cases, your identity.
This is a big deal.
Without this web of data collection that has spread to almost every corner of the internet, Facebook would only know what you've done on Facebook — a small fraction of your total online activity.
That would vastly reduce the company's ability to track you and target you with ads on and off of Facebook. Facebook Audience Network, launched in 2014, is Facebook's advertising engine for targeting ads to people who may never even visit or sign up for a Facebook account.
It's a way to sell more ads to more people.
It's also a way to insulate against slowing growth of the core Facebook properties, by becoming a global ad network that is in some ways separate from Facebook.
But it only works when millions of sites and many, many apps integrate Facebook's technology. If they have to start asking permission from their users, many sites might just drop that integration immediately. For the others, getting a yes from visitors and users is not a forgone conclusion.
That would threaten Facebook's ability to know more about you.
And that would threaten Facebook's ability to adequately target ads to you.
Facebook's not the only company that would be affected. Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and other companies also provide social sharing and linking technologies that could require similar disclosure and solicitation of approval.
