The Election Day Reminder feature on Facebook has been suspended in the European Union until the social networking giant responds to data protection concerns, the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) said on Thursday 27 February.
The DPC believes that this feature, which consists of posting reminders on Facebook during elections in EU countries to register on voting lists or to vote on the same day, raises “a number of data protection concerns, particularly around transparency to users about how personal data is collected when interacting with the feature and subsequently used by Facebook”.
The decision of suspension comes from the social network itself. At the time of the Irish general election on 8 February, the DPC notified Facebook of these concerns and asked it to take corrective action, it explained.
However, as Facebook was unable to put these measures in place before the Irish elections, it decided not to launch its reminder feature during the Irish elections and confirmed that it would not do so for the next EU elections either, until the DPC concerns have been addressed. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)