Impact of GDPR on Social Media Platforms: A Comparative Analysis

This report examines the impact of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) on major social media platforms, specifically Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The report begins by introducing the increasing use of social media and the influence of government regulations. It then delves into how GDPR, which replaced the Data Protection Directive, affects these platforms, including challenges in data tracking, user profiling for advertising, and the need for explicit user consent. The report highlights the increased penalties for non-compliance and the changes in lead generation. It further provides specific examples of how Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are adapting to GDPR, such as Facebook's requirement for businesses to accept its terms and Twitter's use of a data controller in Ireland. The conclusion reiterates the importance of GDPR in protecting personal data and maintaining user privacy, emphasizing the need for social media firms to comply with GDPR guidelines and potential fines for improper data usage.

Facebook, Twitter and
Instagram

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
IMPACT OF GENERAL DATA PROTECTION REGULATION................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
The use of social media sites is rapidly increasing in today's world and the firms focus on
developing the business further. Social media firms also gets impacted due to various proposed
or actuals regulations of government (Lovell and Foy, 2018). The new General Dara Protection
Regulations leads to bring many impacts and possess risk for such firms. GDPR is a law or
regulation that focus on making sure that companies effectively meets various guidelines while
collection and using the users data. The present report briefly explains about the impacts of
proposed and actual regulations implemented by government on the various social media firms
such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
IMPACT OF GENERAL DATA PROTECTION REGULATION
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are from the leading social media websites that are
mostly used. Social media website is being increasingly used by people now-a-days, thus
government possess various laws and regulations that protects personal data of users. Various
proposed and actual regulations leads to bring impacts on the social media firms. One of the
regulation implemented by government is General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that
replaces Data Protection Directive and it is also agreed in April 2016, by the European
Parliament and Council (Kotsios and et.al., 2019). This regulations describes about how
companies need to focus on creating more consistent protection for personal data of customers
and users across EU nations.
The new GDPR makes it difficult for social media firms such as Twitter, Facebook and
Instagram for tracking the data of users. Such firms will also face difficulty for tracking users
behaviour for profiling users for the purpose of advertisement and even for automated targeting.
Companies need to obtain legal basis and explicit opt-in permission from particular user for
being able to do so. One more impact or rising risk on social media firm that is brought by
GDPR is that it has also increased penalties as compared with Data Protection Directive for the
non-compliance (Peras, Mekovec and Picek, 2018).
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter gets impacted due to GDPR as it brings changes in lead
generation as well. Social media firms need to explain about how information or data is to be
used and they also need to justify legal basis or consent in order to process user's data. Following
is given the impacts of how Facebook, Twitter and Instagram comply with the new GDPR.

 Facebook: After implementation of GDPR, it now need businesses for accepting their
terms before developing lead ads. It wants businesses for understanding completely that
what is allowed to do with user's data (Russell and et.al., 2018). Twitter: According to FAQ page, it complies with GDPR through using an Irish
commercial enterprises known as Twitter International Company as a data controller.
Twitter makes sure that permission is received from users before advertisers manage or
handle any sensitive data.
 Instagram: This is owned by Facebook and thus this social media firm follows same
protocols as followed by Facebook (What The GDPR Means for Social Media Marketing,
2018).
CONCLUSION
General Dara Protection Regulation is an European law which was passed for preserving
the personal data and maintain privacy of users and citizens. Social media firms like Facebook,
Instagram and Twitter gets impacted and influenced due to the various proposed or actual
regulation implemented by government. Companies need to comply with guidelines of GDPR
and they also need to pay fines for using the data improperly. The report has briefly explained
about the impacts of such regulations on the social media firms.

REFERENCES
Books and Journal
Kotsios, A. and et.al., 2019. An Analysis of the Consequences of the General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR) on Social Network Research. arXiv preprint arXiv:1903.03196.
Lovell, M. and Foy, M. A., 2018. General Data Protection Regulation May 2018 (GDPR) How
does it affect us?. Bone & Joint 360. 7(4). pp.41-42.
Peras, D., Mekovec, R. and Picek, R., 2018, May. Influence of GDPR on social networks used
by omnichannel contact center. In 2018 41st International Convention on Information
and Communication Technology, Electronics and Microelectronics (MIPRO) (pp. 1132-
1137). IEEE.
Russell, K. D. and et.al., 2018, August. Digital privacy GDPR: a proposed digital transformation
framework. In AMCIS 2018-24th Americas Conference on Information Systems.
Association for Information Systems.
Online
What The GDPR Means for Social Media Marketing. 2018. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.acquisio.com/blog/agency/what-gdpr-means-social-media-marketing/>