Life is better without Facebook.
I'm considering ordering a few hundred stickers with this phrase on them.
Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent
61–70 of 200 posts
Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent
#62I don't have anything against regulations and fines to keep monopolistic companies in check, but that being said, as an European, I can't help but feel a little appalled that there's so much focus on this and so little on actually creating European Googles and Facebooks.
If Google and Facebook aren't good, I'm not sure that the European version would be good..
Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent
#63Facebook 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…
I'm guessing WeChat would be considered a monopoly in China, if they cared about such things. Smaller companies do scary things too. Consider Equifax, the zillion adtech companies out there injecting Javascript everywhere, and all the no-name Android vendors that never put out security updates. At least some of the big names invest in improving security and do some policing of the smaller ones. The Internet's feudal…
Yes, this is the way to understand it. Internet is feudal. Because law hasn't kept up with the transition to a new source of power (data + information flows) the familiar forms of feudalism are emerging. So how does the Internet transition to constitutional monarchy and democracy?
Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent
#64Those 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.
s/death/charter revocation/
Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent
#65Not 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.
Right -- legitimate competition and recognized Fair Use [1] could do the same the the same thing, and (at least in the US) simply reading off newspaper headlines isn't considered a copyright violation.
The question is whether they did something illegal that hurt their industry.
[1] I know, different legal system but whatever their equivalent is
Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Munchen and Berlin are completely different markets In what respect? Berlin and Munich are 363 miles apart, share standard German, a currency, a time zone, a prime minister, some culture, legal system... Are you referring to class/wealth?
They are different cultures. Munich/Bayern - old school, conservative, traditional. Berlin - multicultural, hipster. Kind of like SF vs. Dallas. That said, they are both very German and it's a little bit of a stretch to say they are different markets. But Germany and Spain are night and day different and building for EU-wide is very hard. Not only are there different markets, but Europeans have strong cultures, which…
> There are basically no places in Europe with a critical mass of early adopters for anything in tech
What the? People get in line to buy iPhones here too, Europeans are not all smart. Europe is not just the CCC and The Fabulous Destiny of Amèlie, people are addicted to Facebook about the same as Americans.
Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent
#67Facebook 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…
Free Basics and Internet.org were two of the most disgusting moves i have seen from fb. I wonder if any of Indian workers working at fb questioned zuck about it at one of the his town-hall meetings ( if it is possible to do so).
> Free Basics and Internet.org were two of the most disgusting moves
They're still disgusting moves. India prohibited Internet.org, but Facebook is actively pushing it in many other countries (Nigeria, Indonesia, South Africa, Bolivia, Bangladesh, Kenya, Guatemala, etc.).
Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent
#68I don't have anything against regulations and fines to keep monopolistic companies in check, but that being said, as an European, I can't help but feel a little appalled that there's so much focus on this and so little on actually creating European Googles and Facebooks.
Those are two separate issues. The rules apply to everybody equally, and enforcing them is independent of promoting innovation and economic growth.
Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent
#69Earlier 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.
Monopolies are bad for consumers. The Chinese government is protecting Chinese markets from global monopolies (and also acting as the world's biggest innovation VC). Other countries have been asleep at the wheel and are only just starting to wake up with uber and airbnb. (Also the fact that fb has been caught targeting Kremlin propaganda to voters in foreign elections makes me wonder if they will get shuttered in a lot of places. And Twitter can only be next.)
Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
What happens when ... we've got multiple or even dozens of smaller networks serving regions and niches? I think there are already more than two dozen smaller niche social networks.
What we need is p2p social networks. Huge potential in the tech and it 'just' needs polishing. Salmon protocol for comment threads for example is way more powerful than what we use today (it publishes comments across subscriber networks so you could have a conversation being pieced together across separate social networks). Maybe if some big users with a lot of early adopters like reddit and HN got behind that as a movement and started adopting the tech we would see some traction.