Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Has anyone leveraged GDPR to overturn automated bans?

news.ycombinator.com

61–70 of 77 posts

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone leveraged GDPR to overturn automated bans?

#61
post #57

getting anything sensitive data out of large companies with the GDPR seems to be impossible unless you want to resort to lawyers I was trying to get my matchmaking data out of Activision Blizzard and they flat out refused, saying my data was their property their exact response was: > "the information requested are trade secret and/or intellectual property needed to preserve our game integrity" I complained to the reg…

I hear people saying laws that require police reports, police enforcement or interactions with the court are useless. For people like yourself who feel this way, what alternatives do you propose?

what's the purpose of a regulator if they agree with you and can't do anything to enforce the law?

it's privacy theatre, nothing more

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone leveraged GDPR to overturn automated bans?

#62

We seriously need an Internet Bill of [Personal] Rights and get it into law and use it against the FAANGs. Europe at least seems to be trying, along with California sometimes.

Agreed. We're overdue for a Magna Carta for our new era, lest we be absolutely ruled by the ever-growing myriad of algorithms and models that govern our participation in society and economy.

It upsets me that we've ceded control of a nontrivial part of our lives to a bunch of opaque risk scoring algorithms. No one knows how they work and even if they did they couldn't tell you because that could "help the bad guys". My mom just called me the other day and told me she got locked out of her Google account after trying to reset her password. Who knows what tripwire she accidentally walked into (maybe has to do with the fact that it's a big household that probably has 10 Google accounts on the same IP address). You can find it in a bunch of other places too. Discord will give you vague error messages when you try to sign up with a VOIP number that magically go away when you use a regular number. "Card processing error" when you use a prepaid card. Of course ReCaptcha won't even let you fill out a form if you have an IP address that has ever been associated with known undesirables.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone leveraged GDPR to overturn automated bans?

#63
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What cookie law? The one that states I have to make my website worse for everybody to use? Yeah, I definitely ignore that law, and I wish 100% of website owners did. It feels to me like 99% of them follow it.

I, personally, like it more when I can say "no, don't track me". It's only worse for the user when the cookie notification is blocking the content, there is no "no, I don't agree" button or clicking it means clicking trough 100 extra toggles.

Set the do not track flag if you trust website owners to actually listen to your request. If you don’t trust them to listen to your request, then being forced to manually tell every website you visit not to track you is obviously pointless and worse.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone leveraged GDPR to overturn automated bans?

#64
Are these actual GDPR takedowns causing accounts to be banned, or are these via the internal copyright enforcement systems implemented so that actual legal GDPR requests don't have to be sent (with all the strings attached to those). ie. Banned because of GDPR (giving you rights) or banned because of violating Terms of Service (giving you no rights in almost all TOS)?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone leveraged GDPR to overturn automated bans?

#65

We seriously need an Internet Bill of [Personal] Rights and get it into law and use it against the FAANGs. Europe at least seems to be trying, along with California sometimes.

For every proponent of a bill that protects user rights, there will be three opponents who claim censorship is needed to protect the public, to stop misformation, etc

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone leveraged GDPR to overturn automated bans?

#66
post #2

From memory I believe FAANG etc all _claim_ that appeals you lodge are reviewed by a human. Now if you don’t believe them then you’d need to take them to court and show why you think that’s not the case. Which I guess means my question is why don’t you believe them and how likely is it that they are lying when they claim thy appeals are reviewed by a human?

> Reviewed by a human

Can just mean some low-paid Amazon Mechanical Turk worker clicked on "Yes".

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone leveraged GDPR to overturn automated bans?

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is that the GDPR is pretty much not enforced. 17 companies were fined for GDPR violations just this month. Last year, Amazon was fined €746,000,000, Google €150,000,000, Facebook €60,000,000. https://www.enforcementtracker.com/

I knew this link was going to come up so I've addressed it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30141276 The 60M Facebook fine is a welcome development but my point still stands - how much did Facebook profit from breaching the regulation for the 4 years since it's been in effect? That fine should've had a few extra zeros at the end to actually serve its role, otherwise it's just a very small cost of doing busi…

My understanding is that GDPR allows for increasing fines up to 4% of the revenue. But regulators don’t like going for maximum fines because there’s a higher chance the company fights back.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone leveraged GDPR to overturn automated bans?

#68
post #57

getting anything sensitive data out of large companies with the GDPR seems to be impossible unless you want to resort to lawyers I was trying to get my matchmaking data out of Activision Blizzard and they flat out refused, saying my data was their property their exact response was: > "the information requested are trade secret and/or intellectual property needed to preserve our game integrity" I complained to the reg…

That's a very interesting situation for two reasons:

1. Arguably your matchmaking data is someone else's as well. Meaning, they'd be potentially exposing other people's data to you.

2. Arguably you don't own the matchmaking data. You only own the initial request for matchmaking. The end result is actually a product of their proprietary algorithm. You didn't generate it.

Perhaps it might be a good idea getting in to touch with a privacy campaigner, or if the European equivalent of ACLU exists, and have them test this in court because it affects two different and important aspects.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone leveraged GDPR to overturn automated bans?

#69
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, personally, like it more when I can say "no, don't track me". It's only worse for the user when the cookie notification is blocking the content, there is no "no, I don't agree" button or clicking it means clicking trough 100 extra toggles.

Set the do not track flag if you trust website owners to actually listen to your request. If you don’t trust them to listen to your request, then being forced to manually tell every website you visit not to track you is obviously pointless and worse.

It’s easier to trust a business to follow a law with teeth than to follow a mere non-binding header that politely requests the same thing.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone leveraged GDPR to overturn automated bans?

#70
post #69
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Set the do not track flag if you trust website owners to actually listen to your request. If you don’t trust them to listen to your request, then being forced to manually tell every website you visit not to track you is obviously pointless and worse.

It’s easier to trust a business to follow a law with teeth than to follow a mere non-binding header that politely requests the same thing.

I believe GPC is considered legally binding under CCPA.

The DSA proposal also has language that appears to be intended to make such headers legally binding: "In order to avoid fatiguing recipients who refuse to consent, terminal equipment settings that signal an objection to processing of personal data should be respected."

Post reply on HN