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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

#121

Post by justonepost »

wbl wrote: post #46
Joe-Z wrote: 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.

Monoculture = bad. Rich companies are pretty good at kicking the ladder. Little bit of anti-trust goes a long way.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#122

Post by jm6 »

t1o5 wrote: 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…

Ignorance at it's finest. Unlike the US the Indian telecom sector has cut throat competition, which is why data and call rates are at global lows. Even so they don't have the resources to connect all of India. The math doesn't add up. Facebook Basics would have provided said resources.

A robotic bunch of Indians influenced by the Net Neutrality hoopla developed and targeted at Monopoly Telecom in the US blindly applied these arguments to the Indian context.

The result - rural India is and will remain unconnected. Telcos have no great new ideas on how to connect rural india (and therefore no great avenues to grow) so they are starting to merge. Soon we will have 1-2 giant Telcos monopolies. The clueless herd driven by social media reinforcement and validation strikes again.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#123

Post by la_oveja »

hbosch wrote: post #21

I can't help but read this headline in light of the Equifax ("Equihax") story also on the front page today. "Tracking without consent" seems an odd reason for a government to crack down on a business. Perhaps Google and Facebook, in Europe, aren't allowed to "track without consent" – but other companies can and do. Not just Amazon, as a direct comparison, but apparently credit bureaus and the government themselves ar…

In Spain "credit bureaus" can't track you if you don't sign up for it. But on the other side, banks and other establishments can share a list of "unpaid debtors", which disappearing from is kinda difficult.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#124

Post by aceofspades19 »

Iv wrote: post #98
t1o5 wrote: 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…

Do you remember the people pasting a paragraph saying things like "I do not consent to be tracked and my informations to be sold"? It was met with snark by a lot but I really wonder if it would not be legally valid in several countries.

Maybe if you didn't already agree to the EULA. While it's true that some EULAs are of dubious legality, I doubt a court would say that the facebook EULA is totally invalid, but a random post on facebook is legally binding.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#125

Post by pjc50 »

jacquesm wrote: post #18
fwn wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. :)

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

I'm not sure how this actually works in UK law, or any other EU country, or whether it's even possible. Companies can be dissolved, because they have ceased to function: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/company-strike-of... (see the amazing list of names in 10.3, including "The Queen’s and Lord Treasurer’s Remembrancer")

What usually happens to a sufficiently badly behaving company is that the directors can be struck off: https://www.gov.uk/company-director-disqualification

There is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_Manslaughter_and_Cor... , which is used when there is gross negligence relating to safety which gets someone killed.

(I think that may have been influenced by the long campaign after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marchioness_disaster , but I'm not sure)

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#126

Post by la_oveja »

return0 wrote: post #120
kbart wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's illegal in EU to get a broad consent (aka "we will track you anytime, collect any data we like and do with it as we please"). EULA must state exactly what data is collected and how it will be used, also it must be retractable. You can joke as much as you like about "cookie law", but other privacy laws in EU quite formidable (probably the best in current world anyway). And they will be even stricter soon, as GDPR…

and soon europeans will seek VPNs to access a banned facebook? I mean i fail to see how the cookie law has affected the broader internet in a positive way.

Cookie law is pretty much a joke, as the parent comment stated. But there are some serious and useful regulations in the EU that aren't a joke.

And if FB is banned from Europe (which I highly doubt), the average user won't be able to put a VPN so they'll simply switch to a clone most probably. imho FB is only popular because of the vast userbase and content, not because it is a great platform. We've seen clones appear, get pretty popular and die because they can't sustain a large userbase.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#127

Post by viola11 »

jm6 wrote: post #122
t1o5 wrote: 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…

Ignorance at it's finest. Unlike the US the Indian telecom sector has cut throat competition, which is why data and call rates are at global lows. Even so they don't have the resources to connect all of India. The math doesn't add up. Facebook Basics would have provided said resources. A robotic bunch of Indians influenced by the Net Neutrality hoopla developed and targeted at Monopoly Telecom in the US blindly appli…

So in other words rural India was saved from becoming the robot slaves of social media activists by those very same activists?

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#128

Post by bjelkeman-again »

franciscop wrote: post #89
lioeters wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing I hear about the startup environment in Europe is that investors are more conservative and risk-averse compared to those in the US. Would you elaborate on the "essential aspects of an entrepreneurial environment", and the hard changes that would need to be made to improve the situation? Also curious to hear more about these powerful special interests and "rentiers" - any specific examples in mind?

Try becoming a freelancer opening a company in Spain. Orders of magnitude harder than in the US, so for many recent grads is not a viable option at all.

Different EU countries have different contexts. In Sweden it is very easy.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#129

Post by dingaling »

markyuckerberg wrote: post #106
donatj wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand people's objections. Can you clarify? As someone who was too poor to afford internet for years, I would have adored such a deal. It would have greatly improved my standard of living, and to me I feel like the objections come from people with no understanding of what poverty is like. It really feels like looking a gift horse in the mouth; I feel like the benefits of free internet for the poor far ou…

>> I'd really like to know why it's better for me to have no internet at all than some but not all? Because under the pretext of giving you internet, Facebook is creating shadow profiles about me. Now I would like to know why it is more important for you to get stuff for free than my privacy? All you need to do, of course, is get Facebook to promise me that it won't create these shadow profiles about non-users. At th…

Free Basics puts no obligation on its users to visit or use Facebook at all.

They can browse Accuweather, BBC News, Bing, Wikipedia and other localised websites all day long if they please. For free.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#130

Post by peteretep »

donatj wrote: post #94
parthdesai wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

I don't understand people's objections. Can you clarify? As someone who was too poor to afford internet for years, I would have adored such a deal. It would have greatly improved my standard of living, and to me I feel like the objections come from people with no understanding of what poverty is like. It really feels like looking a gift horse in the mouth; I feel like the benefits of free internet for the poor far ou…

    > I don't understand people's objections
This will be my least popular comment for a while, but having read many many comments about it, it seems to be a combination of two pieces:

* Massive and lingering anti-colonial sentiment

* Disregard for those lower down on the social totem pole

Dressed up in fancy sounding intellectual privacy concerns.

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