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Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

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Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#51
post #13

Facebook tried to pull a similar gimmick in India called "Free Basics". It was dealt with criticism and the regulatory authority in India was smart enough to reject the proposal. Reliance, one of the sheepskin corporation in India wanted to embrace Free Basics with Facebook but could not. Now Reliance is trying a similar act with "Jio" cellphones. Its a good thing that many countries are realizing that US based monop…

It makes me weirdly happy as an American to see it happen. What happens when instead of massive, boring, soulless, mediocre corporations like Facebook serving 2 billion sharecroppers, we've got multiple or even dozens of smaller networks serving regions and niches? That has the potential for innovation we can't begin to understand. Facebook is akin to McDonald's not only spreading internationally but also replacing a…

>Facebook is akin to McDonald's not only spreading internationally but also replacing all other restaurants once it gets in a country.

Sources for McDonlads replacing all other restaurants. Maybe you haven't traveled as much but for me I always check out local McDonalds, hardly actually eating there. One of the reason they have been successful is adopting local tastes. Costa Rica has Gallo Pinto in addition to fries as options. Serbia has this crazy Crispy meat thing.

With McDonalds I know what the product is and I pay for it. With Facebook it's a little less clear what they are doing. One certainty with FB, we are the product.

With FB they are a little nefarious, especially the Free Basics thing. Google is doing similar things with Google Fiber and the defunct ballon idea.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#52
post #46
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To paint a less rosy picture... I think different companies, although they may be monopolies in their own right, spread out over multiple countries is still preferable to a global monopoly. Not just because of data collection, also regarding keeping tech know-how locally for example.

It really isn't. Competition globally is better for consumers. Imagine if you had to drive only US cars to keep automotive knowledge local.

[deleted]

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#53
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think the US is on the brink of civil war you've been spending too much time reading fnords on the internet.

Dunno... I had childhood friends calling for the white supremacists to please come march in Oakland. Imagine the carnage, repercussions and tensions that would come from that. I don't know what you think the precursors to a civil war looks like, but between ignored Occupy protesters' issues, the Tea Party being co-opted into an anti-abortion group with their original complaints being ignored, and the BLM movement tha…

This image is really the best metaphor for our current political climate: https://imgur.com/TxJ7iEi

Mass media just magnifies the angry 1%, creating mountains out of molehills.

eg the Bay Area has maybe 100 BLM/Antifa instigators total. Every police incident involves that same small group of people, but the media hypes up the number of incidents.

Some group postures to look significant, the media obliges to get ad revenue, a handful of people get caught up in the hysteria, and everyone else... yawns. A homeless man delaying BART by 20 minutes causes more wide-spread civil unrest.

People are upset, yes, and America desperately needs a functional Congress... but we're not even close to

> There is a huge group of people who feel (rightly or otherwise) that they have genuine grievances and are willing to get arrested for it

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#54
post #17
post #5

Those are the kind of regulations that should help create a consensus around the utility of the european union. Giant corporation, spending tons of marketing money to make everyone think they're trying to help the world, while behaving like scammers with regards to personal data, and like white collar criminals with regard to tax should be prosecuted to death.

> The EU considers the death penalty as a cruel, inhuman and irreversible punishment which fails to act as a deterrent to criminal behaviour. http://www.eidhr.eu/highlights/death-penalty edit: Hmm, now I'm not sure whether you meant a companies metaphorical death? ..I'll leave it here anyhow. :)

Surely "prosecuted to death" was a figure of speech??

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revocation of corporate charter is the equivalent of the death penalty for a corporation.

Doesn't happen often (at all?) and even if it did, what stops the company's leadership from starting a new, identical company with a identical board, employee list, etc. the next second?

Having to raise all that capital over again, or being temporarily or permanently barred from the industry, a common sanction for bad actors in the securities world.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#57
post #46
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>To paint a less rosy picture... I think different companies, although they may be monopolies in their own right, spread out over multiple countries is still preferable to a global monopoly. Not just because of data collection, also regarding keeping tech know-how locally for example.

It really isn't. Competition globally is better for consumers. Imagine if you had to drive only US cars to keep automotive knowledge local.

Cars are not really a valid analogy here because we're talking about services with network effects that impose behavioral norms for all users regardless of location.

To use your driving example it would be like saying that to use a car everyone has to drive on the same side of the road or accept identical pollution control standards. That's obviously not the case. Cars are adapted--sometimes quite substantially--to local jurisdictions.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#58
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think the US is on the brink of civil war you've been spending too much time reading fnords on the internet.

Dunno... I had childhood friends calling for the white supremacists to please come march in Oakland. Imagine the carnage, repercussions and tensions that would come from that. I don't know what you think the precursors to a civil war looks like, but between ignored Occupy protesters' issues, the Tea Party being co-opted into an anti-abortion group with their original complaints being ignored, and the BLM movement tha…

I don't know what you think the precursors to a civil war looks like, but...

Relevant blog: https://predictiveheuristics.com/

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#59
post #34

Not the first time Spain has taken on a tech giant, but it didn't go so great with Google: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/07/new-study-shows-... "A study commissioned by Spanish publishers has found that a new intellectual property law passed in Spain last year, which charges news aggregators like Google for showing snippets and linking to news stories, has done substantial damage to the Spanish news indust…

The mere fact that was damaged because happened doesn't necessarily mean Y was a bad thing. We live in a dynamic world, and society reshapes itself constantly.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#60
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really isn't. Competition globally is better for consumers. Imagine if you had to drive only US cars to keep automotive knowledge local.

Cars are not really a valid analogy here because we're talking about services with network effects that impose behavioral norms for all users regardless of location. To use your driving example it would be like saying that to use a car everyone has to drive on the same side of the road or accept identical pollution control standards. That's obviously not the case. Cars are adapted--sometimes quite substantially--to l…

Korea and Japan actually did this with cars. Enforcing extremely high tariffs on all imported vehicles. It seems to have worked well for their automotive Industries.
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