Germany Forces Facebook to Get User Consent Before Messaging Merger

Yesterday Germany’s Federal Cartel Office, the country’s antitrust regulator, says that Facebook needs user consent before it merges data from Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram.
In future, Facebook will no longer be allowed to force its users to agree to the practically unrestricted collection and assigning of non-Facebook data to their Facebook user accounts.
Kudos to Germany, but it’s disappointing that another country should step in to do the job of the United States. We should be regulating Facebook.