German anti-trust regulators have attacked the heart of Facebook’s ad business by ordering it to let consumers use the service without agreeing to data tracking outside of their Facebook account. The ruling cites Facebook’s dominant market position as reason to make it meet more stringent consent standards than competitors.

When California passed a strong Consumer Privacy Act last year, many expected it would be watered down before taking effect in 2020. So far that hasn’t happened and, with the deadline fast approaching, it seemed the law might keep its teeth. Or not: it turns out that California is still working on regulations to implement the law and, sure enough, the Association of National Advertisers and other groups are lobbying hard to limit its impact. We’ll see if public concerns about privacy can overcome industry pressure. Anybody taking bets?

Salesforce’s Dreamforce mega-conference is next week and the company’s publicity elves are already working overtime.  In the first of what are sure to be daily announcements this week, the company announced 100+ industry-specific prompts, data models, and AI capabilities across its fifteen industry clouds.  It also launched an AI Use Case Library to house its industry-specific AI offerings.