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

221–230 of 404 posts

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#221

Post by lemming »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #120

I'd argue there is no way to properly communicate to the average facebook user how their data is being collected and used in a way that is transparent but not confusing. For example, explain to someone who is illiterate in technology how the act of you "tagging" your friend in a photo is to offload image labeling work to train a deep neural network to infer your friend's face. If you radically simplify the issue in l…

It makes it seem way more terminator/ominous than it is to the average person.

Personally, I think it's actually pretty ominous. Prompting people to consider what the consequences of their FB actions are can't be bad - I bet a lot of people wouldn't tag their friends if they knew what it was doing and really thought about the implications.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#222

Post by Xylakant »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #212
Xylakant wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you cannot provide a list of sales by country, you maybe should not be running a business.

Well, it's not that - before that law was introduced, you could simply ignore the country, since it's about digital downloads. If all you cared for was getting a payment, it was not unusual to have the transaction list in the forms of e-mails. Now you need much more information.

A customer is entitled to an invoice and a full invoice requires an address. Most businesses that offer digital goods and services should have had that even before. All the people I know that were affected by the VAT changes certainly had all customer adresses.

This is not a cash sale in a local book store.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#223

Post by peoplewindow »

ncallaway wrote: post #178
peoplewindow wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the law reasonable? It's not even clear what is allowed under it and what isn't. The EU refuses to clarify anything, the only time any decision will be made is by courts, if there's an actual dispute in progress. The rules are so vague that any firm could be argued to be in violation. And the EU acts as judge, jury and executioner. It looks like a way to tax the SV tech firms without needing a treaty change. A…

> How is the law reasonable? It's not even clear what is allowed under it and what isn't. The EU refuses to clarify anything, the only time any decision will be made is by courts, if there's an actual dispute in progress. How is that different from a US law like HIPAA? The structures of the law seem largely the same, in that they give you guidelines to follow, but provide no clarity about what specifically is require…

HIPAA and other mega-regulations like them have the same problems. And they do cause people to just give up rather than deal with the risk. I've listened in on various conversations around health products over the years. HIPAA is a common reason given for not getting into the healthcare space and focusing elsewhere. A lot of smart people and smart products that could have been focused on health just never turn up at all, because of the vagueness, poor drafting and expansive reach of such things.

But this specific thread is about EU social network privacy fines, not US healthcare privacy fines.

The US courts aren't quite the same. They're a lot more independent. The ECJ has a history of surprising things, like hearing cases where one of the appellants wasn't aware he was involved in a court case at all and both sides turned out to be the same law firm, or simply voiding parts of the treaties they found to be inconvenient to the EU, or inventing new 'rights' on the fly (legislating from the bench). Like the right to be forgotten, which was invented by the judges in response to a lawsuit and required massive responses similar to the creation of entirely new regulations.

The Supreme Court is generally much better about following the Constitution, not inventing new laws on the fly and ensuring the cases before them are actually legitimate.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#224

Post by mseebach »

waytogo wrote: post #18

Wait until GDPR is in place in May and German and other EU courts will rule FB to death. IDK how FB will ever be compliant with GDPR and survive that huge upcoming fines in the long term or in the worst case the withdrawal from these markets.

> Wait until GDPR is in place in May and German and other EU courts will rule FB to death.

If indeed GDPR will enable those courts to "rule FB to death", and not, as repeatedly promised, be entirely reasonable to comply with, including for Facebook, obviously Facebook will shut down in Europe (and so will a good number of other popular services), and tell their millions of former users why. Here's a quick, free lesson in politics: that will not end well for the GDPR.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#225

Post by therealmarv »

Xylakant wrote: post #186
dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not entirely true - MOSS actually works quite well, and preparing a sales report grouped by country should be trivial no matter what infrastructure you're using.

If you cannot provide a list of sales by country, you maybe should not be running a business.

This is all stupid if you sell a really small amount of digital goods online. It all starts with 1€ (and less) on a ebook and in comparison: On normal goods there is a threshold of roughly ~100,000€ depending on country sales.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#226

Post by stochastic_monk »

x0x0 wrote: post #220
manmal wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving the EU would have very strong network effects and is IMO not an option for Facebook. The entry barrier to social networks is so low now that this could trigger a mass exodus in the rest of the world.

Why do you think social networks have cross country network effects? Xing and VK seem to be doing just fine.

I’m completely unfamiliar with VK, but I’d love to believe that it’s a subtle nod to the Voight-Kampff test.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#227

Post by freeone3000 »

snoman wrote: post #109
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 responsib…

That simply reflects technical reality. Once you give them information, you no longer can restrict what they can do with it technically. legally, sure, you can write whatever law you like, but the best way to protect your privacy continues to be technical measures.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#228

Post by mseebach »

songshu wrote: post #125
waytogo wrote: post #18

Wait until GDPR is in place in May and German and other EU courts will rule FB to death. IDK how FB will ever be compliant with GDPR and survive that huge upcoming fines in the long term or in the worst case the withdrawal from these markets.

The GDPR is beautiful and an example of the best outcomes democracy can produce. The winners are pretty much everyone. It's sad that the US can't implement public policy like this.

> The winners are pretty much everyone.

You don't know that yet. There is not a great track record anywhere for implementing radical reform without significant unintended consequences.

It's totally reasonable to be cautiously optimistic, but when people are only barely not frothing around the mouth at the prospect of landing a punch on Goliath, I'd err on the side of caution, at least until we see how the chips fell.

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#229

Post by redbergy »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #130
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. Microsoft had years to prepare and an army of lawyers too.

And they're doing just fine now... I don't get the point?

Re: German court rules Facebook use of personal data illegal

#230

Post by hathawsh »

jbigelow76 wrote: post #130
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. Microsoft had years to prepare and an army of lawyers too.

Hmm? Microsoft went through some pain, but their valuation looks fine and they are on the rise again.

https://qz.com/300946/microsoft-at-its-peak-would-have-crush...

Post reply on HN