The US accuses Facebook of illegally favouring immigrant workers in Germany. This follows a long line of controversy between the site and the German government. It was only in March last year that Facebook opened its German-based personal platform, Facebook Flow. This is essentially an instant messaging system that allows members to chat in real time. This contrasts with the popular messaging systems such as Skype or Vonage, which run much more slowly.
Germany blocked Google from bringing its search engine, Overture, to Germany. Google used this as a reason to offer its search service exclusively to the German market. In response, the German government slapped Google with a tax of up to 5 billion euros and demanded it pay this money back. Facebook has said that it will fight the tax with Google, but it is unclear whether this can work in Europe.
The site also has hundreds of thousands of non-Germans working for it in Germany. Many of these may be overpaid or working inefficient hours as a consequence of being sent to other European countries to work. However, there are plenty of Germans working at Facebook who are native speakers and who speak fluent English. This obviously does not affect the number of people using Facebook in Germany because they will still use Google for most of their searches.
The whole thing highlights the differences between social media and traditional business. Social media is an interactive social network that allows people to post information about anything they want without fear of it being viewed by anyone. On the other hand, a business website must have a sales page to attract visitors. This means that the website will display relevant information about the company, products and services. This information is then collected and stored by the site’s owners or advertisers and then sold to interested parties.
The problem arises when the website owner does not want their advertisers to see this information. Therefore, they set up various filters which prevent the ads from being displayed. When you visit such a site, you will see little or no information at all about the company whose ad you clicked on. Such a situation has led to numerous lawsuits against Facebook over the privacy breach. In addition to that, some advertisers are not paying their Facebook based advertisements for months.
Meanwhile, the German economy is suffering a recession and many small businesses are closing down. Therefore, the availability of jobs is decreasing. As a result, the population is increasing again and the unemployment rate is rising. Therefore, the population is not growing as rapidly as it should and this is leading to more people claiming they are being unfairly targeted for employment by Facebook employees using illegal methods to gain employment.
