Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 404 posts

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#101

Post by ionforce »

waytogo wrote: post #94
lima wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GDPR isn't actually as bad as people claim. The law is actually pretty reasonable. It is the result of years of discussion and deliberation. In fact, privacy watchdogs are complaining that it doesn't go far enough - it leaves plenty of holes. Most of the GDPR is about informed consent, having a valid reason for processing personal data and individual rights. Facebook will do just fine, they had years to prepare a…

> Facebook will do just fine, they had years to prepare and an army of lawyers. They won't do fine. Don't want to go into details but their actual products/required architectures for their products just can't be GDPR compliant. And they didn't prepare anything. You confuse them with Google--they prepared GDPR but FB? Btw, one of GDPR's key motivation was to take FB down.

> one of GDPR's key motivation was to take FB down.

Do you have a citation for this claim?

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#102

Post by tschwimmer »

hamandcheese wrote: post #55
lima wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deeply unattractive business environment for companies exploiting people's personal data without their consent? Good.

If you volunteer your data to Facebook I have a hard time considering you to have been “exploited.”

I don't have a strong position on the broader issue, but I feel like this argument ignores some context. It's one thing to sign up for your local car wash's loyal program and have them do some lightweight customer research on the data. It's quite another for to input your demographic info and interests into a social networking site and have it be analyzed by some of the most sophisticated data analytics in history. The potential downside/cost to the user is orders of magnitude larger. I think it's a stretch to say the user is giving informed consent to (for example) have their manual photo tagging be used to train a model so that a computer can identify their friend's faces automatically. The average user has no idea such a thing is even possible.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#103

Post by TomMarius »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #98
TomMarius wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So they're basically saying "our citizens are so stupid they can't even read properly while becoming a customer of a company based on the other side of the world, and we fine you for their stupidity". Just LOL. I live in the EU and I feel the socialism coming back. I need to get away soon.

That's a very uncharitable way of looking at things. A different way of phrasing it would be that the EU recognizes the power disparity between Facebook and any individual user, and that an individual user does not have any ability to negotiate with FB, and thus the contract of adhesion that is the ToS is not made in good faith.

You know you don't have to use Facebook, right? It's not even like it's the only social network. Facebook is not something you need.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#104

Post by mrguyorama »

TomMarius wrote: post #69
mr_toad wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can hide from your your boss, your wife, or even your mother, but you can’t hide from Facebook.

Oh you can, just hit the "power off" button on your device and it'll have zero effects on you.

Except when your friends take pictures of you and upload them. Facebook doesn't need you to have a device to affect you every single day

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#105

Post by s73v3r_ »

TomMarius wrote: post #69
mr_toad wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can hide from your your boss, your wife, or even your mother, but you can’t hide from Facebook.

Oh you can, just hit the "power off" button on your device and it'll have zero effects on you.

Or, Facebook could just not do that stuff.

Part of the problem is that FB still compiles and uses data on people even if they're not FB users. FB assuredly has plenty of data on you, and uses that as they see fit, regardless of if you've agreed to their terms or not. I would hardly consider that to be 'zero effects'.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#106

Post by jimnotgym »

nordsieck wrote: post #34
shadowtree wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1., If you store data of EU residents, you are under EU jurisdiction (GDPR) and can be targeted by fines. 2., The EU is a very rich, large market - considered the single largest economy in the world (GDP per capita). Good luck not targeting it with your products. 3., The pendulum around data protection is swinging back, this is normal. Apple saw it and adjusted already. Google is cooperating and staying quiet. Only F…

> 1., If you store data of EU residents, you are under EU jurisdiction (GDPR) and can be targeted by fines. Anyone can claim jurisdiction. Enforcement is another matter entirely. If there is no presence in Europe, I can't imagine how the they would collect.

I would target the channels whereby the funds from their massive advertising sales are being routed, probably

Facebook have no business in the EU unless they are selling advertising to EU companies

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#107

Post by waytogo »

ionforce wrote: post #101
waytogo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Facebook will do just fine, they had years to prepare and an army of lawyers. They won't do fine. Don't want to go into details but their actual products/required architectures for their products just can't be GDPR compliant. And they didn't prepare anything. You confuse them with Google--they prepared GDPR but FB? Btw, one of GDPR's key motivation was to take FB down.

> one of GDPR's key motivation was to take FB down. Do you have a citation for this claim?

It's the modern version of a trade war between the US and the EU which targets massive online monopolies which the EU doesn't have.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#108

Post by tobltobs »

TomMarius wrote: post #83
tobltobs wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB can stop to have a corporate presence in the EU.

I hope they do. That will mean a lot of lost tax money for the EU (I'm EU citizen btw).

It will only hit Ireland. Thanks to some trickery they only pay 0.03% taxes on their revenue in other EU countries. Wont be a big loss.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#109

Post by snoman »

Tharkun wrote: post #30

FB have taken out huge newspaper and billboard ads in Belgium, pretending to care about your privacy. They're trying to divert attention from their real privacy issues, by saying "you can choose who can see your stuff".

If I could be given a bit of latitude to generalize for a second, I've noticed that America has a very "self-focused" culture wherein the individual is often seen as being solely responsible for everything relating to their self.

That makes a lot of sense but I've seen this often taken to extremes such that the perspective is used to absolve various levels of government, corporations, and organizations from responsibility over making decisions about common goods or on the behalf of others (things like healthcare, safety/protection, insurance, privacy, etc.).

So this position from Facebook seems (to me) to be a very American approach to take. ie. "We give you a plethora of options to secure your information, thus it's on you what information we get. After that, once we have it, then its ours and not yours anymore."

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#110

Post by peoplewindow »

jimnotgym wrote: post #74
twblalock wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a list of countries with the most Facebook users: https://www.statista.com/statistics/268136/top-15-countries-... The first EU country is #10, and it won't even be an EU country in a few years. I think Facebook would survive leaving the EU market just fine. I'm sure they really, really don't want to, but they could. Edit: updated link

Link is not working for me, but if you mean the UK 1) GDPR applies to the UK even if Brexit happens. It is already a matter of UK law. In fact it seems the UK is leading the way to GDPR adoption. 2) It is totally unclear that Brexit is going to cause any changes to the UK/EU regulatory arrangements in anything but name.

Point is that the UK government already has a tax regime. It has no incentive to fine Facebook so much there's a risk of it leaving. The ICO already said that it doesn't intend to use its big new fining powers under GDPR anyway, as there's no need.

The rest of the EU is a bigger question. The EU is desperate for cash. It faces a huge budget shortfall, member states that don't want to pay more and it can't raise a corporation tax itself by treaty. Repeatedly fining tech firms looks like a nice way out for them.

But that said, hopefully the UK will repeal GDPR eventually along with associated EU nonsense like the cookie law.

Post reply on HN