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Facebook points finger at Google and Twitter for data collection

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Re: Facebook points finger at Google and Twitter for data collection

#61

Post by marcell »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #57
marcell wrote: post #50

Contrary to most comments here, it is significant that other companies do. Facebook competes in the free market. If they scale back on data collection, that will hurt their offering to advertisers and cost them money that will go to Google and others. That lost revenue will harm their ability to retain talent and build new products, and ultimately cost them their user base. “We don’t track you” is not as compelling a…

> Scaling back all US companies will give a leg up to competitors in more lenient jurisdictions Laws can be written to only apply to American users. That would leave American companies free to compete on level terms in other countries.

Sort of, the issue is companies typically bootstrap in their domestic market. If laws are restrictive it will kill companies before they even get to the point of international expansion.

Re: Facebook points finger at Google and Twitter for data collection

#62

Post by x0x0 »

losteric wrote: post #55
x0x0 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, on the one hand, I really would like a GDPR equivalent law in the US. OTOH, anyone who says they clearly understand the implications of GDPR for their site has either spent a lot of money on lawyers or is lying. Let alone someone who has implemented it. Privacy by design requires deletion of data after legitimate interests and/or consent have expired, probably (!!!) in 3rd party systems. How, precisely, do you im…

> OTOH, anyone who says they clearly understand the implications of GDPR for their site has either spent a lot of money on lawyers or is lying. Let alone someone who has implemented it. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELE... It's long but the language is far easier than American legalese. The implications depend on your site/service behaviors. An RSS reader is pretty trivial, interactive soci…

> It's long but the language is far easier than American legalese. The implications depend on your site/service behaviors. An RSS reader is pretty trivial, interactive social media... less so.

Except the GDPR is full of hand-wavy stuff. Who needs a DPO? What is "large scale" in that context? How exactly do you conduct a legitimate interest balancing test? Who is your lead regulator and under what criteria as an American company can you decide?

Also, people have a lot more 3rd party systems than most think. Think transactional mailers, marketing mailers, billing systems, payroll, zendesk, etc.

And even an RSS reader is scary. What if someone follows a series of blogs about HIV treatments, or internal trade union politics? If that means you could infer the person is poz or is a member of that trade union, you now have heightened scrutiny data in your possession.

Re: Facebook points finger at Google and Twitter for data collection

#63

Post by JumpCrisscross »

shady-lady wrote: post #60
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I personally don't really care about what information they collect If the government said "let's make a database of every Jew in America," people would get rightfully riled up. Yet we've allowed a single entity to assemble a database orders of magnitudes more detailed.

My opinions are influenced by (if memory serves) some Microsoft researcher who years back said something along the lines of how having all the data points is how computers can truly benefit an individual. You can see the early fruition of this by looking at how useful Google Now/map planning etc are. Computers could be our all knowing assistants. That's on a very surface superficial level. Imagine the kinds of benefi…

There are tremendous benefits to centralizing these data. But that power cuts both ways. With the benefit of hindsight, Mark Zuckerberg and his acolytes created about the worst possible culture we could have picked, as a society, for entrusting these data to.

Re: Facebook points finger at Google and Twitter for data collection

#64

Post by losteric »

tested24 wrote: post #53
jkachmar wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? Perhaps one of the facets of the GDPR is the EU’s willingness to accept that fostering “globally competitive tech companies” may not be in the best interests of itself or its citizens.

Yes building tech companies that people love to use and provide high paying jobs does not benefit the citizens of a country

Meth labs also create products with mass appeal and briefly high-paying jobs. Considering how social media is eroding American political discourse, Europe may be better-off in the long run even GDPR is as bad as you imagine.

Re: Facebook points finger at Google and Twitter for data collection

#65

Post by losteric »

x0x0 wrote: post #62
losteric wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OTOH, anyone who says they clearly understand the implications of GDPR for their site has either spent a lot of money on lawyers or is lying. Let alone someone who has implemented it. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELE... It's long but the language is far easier than American legalese. The implications depend on your site/service behaviors. An RSS reader is pretty trivial, interactive soci…

> It's long but the language is far easier than American legalese. The implications depend on your site/service behaviors. An RSS reader is pretty trivial, interactive social media... less so. Except the GDPR is full of hand-wavy stuff. Who needs a DPO? What is "large scale" in that context? How exactly do you conduct a legitimate interest balancing test? Who is your lead regulator and under what criteria as an Ameri…

> Think transactional mailers, marketing mailers, billing systems, payroll, zendesk, etc.

GDPR has explicit provisions for all of these legitimate interests (notifications, clients, employees, customers). Most of these services are aware of and planning for GDPR, I wouldn't want to work with any that aren't.

> And even an RSS reader is scary. What if someone follows a series of blogs about HIV treatments, or internal trade union politics? If that means you could infer the person is poz or is a member of that trade union, you now have heightened scrutiny data in your possession.

Right, and I like that! Attempting to derive sensitive information should require consent, transparency, right to rectification, and stringent data handling requirements. It sounds like overkill for an RSS reader, but why the heck does an RSS reader need to do that kind of profiling in the first place? Maybe that's the right level of scrutiny and prior applications were unwarranted?

On the other hand, there are no concerns with simply storing the followed blogs.

> Except the GDPR is full of hand-wavy stuff.

Can't win, legislation is either micromanaged or hand-wavy... it's worth noting that some of the hand-waving is actually business friendly.

I'm not saying these laws are perfect. There is definitely room for improvement, but this is still a consumer win over the pre-GDPR wild west.

Re: Facebook points finger at Google and Twitter for data collection

#66

Post by x0x0 »

losteric wrote: post #65
x0x0 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's long but the language is far easier than American legalese. The implications depend on your site/service behaviors. An RSS reader is pretty trivial, interactive social media... less so. Except the GDPR is full of hand-wavy stuff. Who needs a DPO? What is "large scale" in that context? How exactly do you conduct a legitimate interest balancing test? Who is your lead regulator and under what criteria as an Ameri…

> Think transactional mailers, marketing mailers, billing systems, payroll, zendesk, etc. GDPR has explicit provisions for all of these legitimate interests (notifications, clients, employees, customers). Most of these services are aware of and planning for GDPR, I wouldn't want to work with any that aren't. > And even an RSS reader is scary. What if someone follows a series of blogs about HIV treatments, or internal…

3rd party: the fact remains that doing deletions, both as a consent withdrawal and a privacy by design, is extremely complex. Particularly when privacy is withdrawn before a LI expires. You can hand wave it away as gdpr provides for this -- which isn't at all responsive to what I said -- but it's difficult to do nonetheless.

I never said the RSS reader is profiling. They don't have to be. Does the mere presence of the inescapable user data -- ie what feeds they monitor -- create heightened scrutiny, because someone else could infer with that data, were it to be leaked. It well may. I would seriously consider blocking EU users until this is sorted out.

Worse, the RSS reader could offer suggested feeds, and accidentally find themselves in possession of such data, entirely accidentally. Even if users were clearly asked if they wanted to see suggested data, or allow their data to be used to suggest feeds. They may not intend to derive sensitive data to possess it.

Or suggest you have a site like YC, and someone puts "hi, I'm poz" in their description. Tada, sensitive data.

The GDPR should have defined when a DPO is required, what a LI balancing test is, etc. Alternatively, the orgs could have pretended to be competent and issued guidance before -- oh right, they haven't issued final guidance yet. I'm sure 6 weeks is plenty of time.

Re: Facebook points finger at Google and Twitter for data collection

#67

Post by flycaliguy »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #63
shady-lady wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My opinions are influenced by (if memory serves) some Microsoft researcher who years back said something along the lines of how having all the data points is how computers can truly benefit an individual. You can see the early fruition of this by looking at how useful Google Now/map planning etc are. Computers could be our all knowing assistants. That's on a very surface superficial level. Imagine the kinds of benefi…

There are tremendous benefits to centralizing these data. But that power cuts both ways. With the benefit of hindsight, Mark Zuckerberg and his acolytes created about the worst possible culture we could have picked, as a society, for entrusting these data to.

Worst possible? Pffft.

Re: Facebook points finger at Google and Twitter for data collection

#68

Post by thisisit »

I am sure Facebook looked at today's internet discourse and thought - If whatabout-ism works for every discussion out there, why not us? Hence, they asked - What about Google? What about Twitter? They just dint go the full mile and asked - What about Amazon? What about those emails? What about "world peace"?

But, whatabout-ism misses an important point - we cannot get everything all at once. Everything happens one step at a time.

Re: Facebook points finger at Google and Twitter for data collection

#69

Post by ethanwillis »

tested24 wrote: post #12
ethanwillis wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HIPAA has IP addresses listed as one of the unique identifiers you must protect in your dataset.

Only when associated with medical records... I'm the same person as the other account btw, not trying to hide that.

Oh I completely understand that. What I meant to really say is that at least in some realms we already do consider IP addresses as personal information that should be protected.

Re: Facebook points finger at Google and Twitter for data collection

#70

Post by thaumasiotes »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #45
thaumasiotes wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the government said "let's make a database of every Jew in America," people would get rightfully riled up. This is an interesting case. You're completely correct, but it's basically a special privilege that Jews enjoy (and that has spread to a taboo on asking about religion on the census). If you're part of any other demographic group and you don't want to be counted, you get yelled at for not seeing the grand s…

> it's basically a special privilege that Jews enjoy Any group with (a) a living memory of violent ostracisation and (b) some ability to conceal their group membership knows this. Gay men and women, for example, would fight against a sexual orientation question on the census. (One wonders if Tim Cook, had he not been born a gay man in Mobile, Alabama, would be as sensitive to privacy issues.) Side note: I used Jews i…

Counterpoint: http://reason.com/blog/2018/04/06/i-dont-want-to-tell-the-fe...

> For the LGBT question, the exact opposite is happening: People who want a head count of gays and transgender people believe the data will then be valuable in influencing federal policies and spending on projects that benefit LGBT people—or, more accurately, to benefit certain LGBT organizations.

See also the effort by certain ethnic groups to split into a special MENA category on the census, despite having passed as white successfully for the last entirety of history.

It's not about ability to conceal group membership.

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