Most countries like Facebook. Germany’s an outlier. The Germans disapprove of everything Facebook stands for. It wasn’t very long ago that Germans lived with networks of spies and informants in their country – the Stasi in East Germany and the Gestapo before that. As a result, they have a fundamental suspicion of anyone who wants to gather lots of personal information – which of course is Facebook’s business model. Where others see a website that’s good for wasting time, Germans see a comprehensive surveillance tool that needs muscular oversight.
– from Careless People book by Sarah Wynn-Williams