The Impact of GDPR on Social Media Practices
Abstract
On May 25th, 2018 the General Data Protection Regulation came into force within the European Union. This landmark piece of legislation has the potential to strongly disrupt the industrial landscape of Telematics and Information Communication Technologies. This essay focuses on the challenges brought to life for Social Media entities and their implications governed by such legislation. The essential questions asked are how has the new regulation altered specific aspects of the ever evolving landscape of data privacy, trust built on the internet and what is the role of user control on these new developments? From a normative standpoint, the consequences of changes enacted by such laws are analyzed. The research methodology includes a series of case studies, undertaken to gain insights from both parts implicated. Firstly, from the perspective of the service providers and secondly, from an end-user’s standpoint, the individuals affected by this change, on how they do interpret it and what they wish from such parties. Since the dawn of the millennium with the first analytical simulations that foretold of the large processor power paradigm of what we now call “Big Data”, technological advancements enabled by cost reductions in processors and storage have brought a huge amplification in both knowledge of individuals and technical possibilities to process such knowledge within industrial capacities. The ongoing data breach epidemic pertaining all data entities that store vast amounts of private data of individuals led the European Union legislative body to major changes in the data protection laws. Being a legislative body elected by voting citizens, the European Parliament tends to advocate towards its citizen’s interest, often independently in certain locations such as the EU, where there is no conflict of interest between policy and economic pressure groups. It is apparent this concern has not been voiced by individuals alone. In this manner, the GDPR has been seen as a step forward in the right direction. The GDPR is a complex legislation containing 173 recitals and 99 peer standard draft articles on 88 pages.
Keywords -GDPR, data privacy, social media, user control, legislation, data protection, trust, case studies.
