Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#241

Post by taurath » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:31 AM UTC

0x426577617265 wrote: post #226

taurath wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s you vs a team of 200 PhDs who’s entire job is to make you spend more time on the platform and make more clicks. It’s invasive marketing on a level that has never occurred in human history, and also happens to have the effect of amplifying the craziest voices. It’s hijacking people’s psychology, creating fights when peace would be better, because fights are less boring. And you pay for it, just with the dissoluti…

Well said, really sums up the problem. People I know and even work with have fallen in this trap and I have no idea how to get them back out. It’s like they are a completely different person. It’s not just politics either - it’s this overwhelming amount of information that they are being fed about everything.

Yeah... I considered being a little more "both sides" about it but anyone with an objective view of reality can see how far off the deep end of conspiracies the average conservative has gone. My parents believe Obama was a muslim. They believe in a Deep State. They're open to conspiracies about every democrat in power being a pedophile. To those who might say "Blame them, not facebook" - I absolutely blame my parents, but I also blame facebook for putting links to those ideas next to photos of friend's babies and vacations. This isn't what people signed up for facebook for. They signed up so they could keep in touch with their family and friends, and post updates about their lives. They didn't sign up for it to become their #1 source of news carefully crafted to get them to click and confirm either their worst fears or highest desires, the objective truth be damned.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#242

Post by ricardo81 » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:31 AM UTC

criddell wrote: post #202

ricardo81 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier to put things online wrt technical barrier of entry and cost, but it's a lot harder for things to get seen. Got a popular page on Facebook? pay for it to be seen. Got a great unique website? Pay to be seen via Adwords. Website owners don't link so liberally as they once did because the link graph has been obliterated by "what people think will please Google" rather than linking to things they think other…

> it's a lot harder for things to get seen Do you think it was easier in the age before the internet to be gain an audience?

I was born in '81 so I'm probably not qualified to say.

I made a site in the late 90's, biology-online.org which I harried universities and whatnot to link to which they happily obliged, ad-free educational content laid out well. Nowadays that kind of solicitation is ignored. All I'm saying is it was easier then than what it is now, and large platforms deciding what gets seen and what isn't certainly doesn't grease the wheels of discovery.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#243

Post by mfer » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:31 AM UTC

dheera wrote: post #164

Traster wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absolutely not what's happening here though. Facebook absolutely could keep the data within the EU, they just think it's more profitable to move UK user data to California. Now, it's a valid question as to why the UK would allow their constituents most personal data to be transferred out of their jurisdiction, but that's up to the UK government. Facebook exists in hundreds of jurisdictions, it's not rare for…

Would it be possible to store data in a cryptographically decentralized way to stop giving meaning to "where" a data is stored? Or maybe even just XOR it with a random key, put the result in the UK and put the key in the US. That way neither US nor UK has "personal data" -- independently each country just got a pile of white noise -- but the two countries together do have it, and they wouldn't be able to say who "rea…

This issue isn't a case of what is technologically feasible.

This is about what's profitable and within legal policies of a country they are operating in.

Where data is stored is sometimes an issue of jurisdiction policy (laws).

Think of this as a separation between requirements (what) and implementation (how)

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#244

Post by pilsetnieks » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:31 AM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #218

avianlyric wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have an issue giving my data to an American company. I just don't want them to store it in the US without my explicit consent. Equally if you buy a product from a Chinese company in the US, you would expect that product to meet US standards, not Chinese standards.

>Equally if you buy a product from a Chinese company in the US, you would expect that product to meet US standards, not Chinese standards. Conversely, if China had higher standards, I wouldn't be surprised if the product met the chinese standards. In this case, California standards will meet or exceed those of the UK.

It's not about Californian standards. Whatever standards they have, the federal government including all the alphabet agencies can still vacuum up that data. (More so since the Brits aren't American citizens.) That was the gist of the recent ECJ ruling against the so-called "privacy shields."

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#245

Post by spurgu » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:34 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #236

ricardo81 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier to put things online wrt technical barrier of entry and cost, but it's a lot harder for things to get seen. Got a popular page on Facebook? pay for it to be seen. Got a great unique website? Pay to be seen via Adwords. Website owners don't link so liberally as they once did because the link graph has been obliterated by "what people think will please Google" rather than linking to things they think other…

How would you have been able to get people to see your great unique website 20 years ago? I don't remember it being easy to get a large audience at any point in the internet's history.

Word of mouth. Post in some relevant chats/forums. Get a handful of other people interested, have them spread the word (links/chat) for you.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#246

Post by Sargos » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:34 AM UTC

alisonkisk wrote: post #206

Sargos wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say they will turn themselves into protocols. The social protocols that are developed will displace those corporations over time as they provide more functionality with fewer restrictions.

How would an ungoverned corporation be less evil than one subject to democratic laws?

Facebook is not subject to democratic laws as they ignore most of them and only follow certain ones from a small group of about a dozen countries.

A decentralized organization is governed by the public which is more democratic than other systems that exist today.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#247

Post by pavon » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:34 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #220

This won't fly, for the simple reason that the ICO will have the same set of rules regarding data privacy that the EU has right now. They may change it, but that's the starting position. Facebook is not going to like the kind of fines that the ICO can throw at them.

The headline is somewhat misleading. The purpose of this move as the article explains is not to skirt the UK laws that have been "imported" from EU, but to avoid having to comply with both the UK-GDPR and EU-GDPR for UK citizens initially, and to make it easier to operate according to any bilateral treaties between the US and UK.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#248

Post by ricardo81 » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:35 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #236

ricardo81 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier to put things online wrt technical barrier of entry and cost, but it's a lot harder for things to get seen. Got a popular page on Facebook? pay for it to be seen. Got a great unique website? Pay to be seen via Adwords. Website owners don't link so liberally as they once did because the link graph has been obliterated by "what people think will please Google" rather than linking to things they think other…

How would you have been able to get people to see your great unique website 20 years ago? I don't remember it being easy to get a large audience at any point in the internet's history.

You build a site with unique content, decent layout, design. Email other website owners "Hi, I think this would be would be a decent resource for your 'other resources' page / your visitors might like this". (as opposed to ... what other means do you discover new content?)

Only, no one does link pages anymore, because they're fearful of platform algos deciding that their inbound/outbound link profile is toxic.

What I'm after is a more decentralised Internet, less black box algo, where people link to whatever they want without cutting off their oxygen, or having to pay for exposure. Might be idealistic, but FB/Google have certainly been diagnosed as part of the problem.

In my case, getting a good link from harvard.edu really helped wrt search. And obviously a great link from Harvard drived traffic by itself.

Just a hint for the downvoters, that's how it was done 20 years ago. Nowadays due to systemic link building spam, perhaps not. I'm addressing the above reply is all.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#249

Post by Sargos » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:38 AM UTC

alisonkisk wrote: post #208

Sargos wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love talking about this stuff but it does have a lot of technical jargon and dependent knowledge that is very difficult to convey simply. I'll try my best. Also this stuff is still being designed and built so some of it is not even concrete yet. Getting really into this would be a big article too so I'll try to be brief but not too much. The basic premise is that protocols are more powerful than centralized entitie…

If you can't even explain it to professional techies, it will never be adopted by the billions.

I'm an engineer not an educator. Sit in a room with me and a whiteboard and it would come across pretty easily.

Also professional techies doesn't really mean much. If I throw out terms like sybil resistance, economic abstraction, or merkle tree it doesn't really make things clearer for most people here.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#250

Post by avianlyric » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 12:39 AM UTC

pilsetnieks wrote: post #229

uncomputation wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to be anti-capitalist real quick but what is it with HN and dying for Big Tech/1%? Do you think FB would show you the same loyalty?

I was actually talking about this one person's situation. They're on HN so they should be aware of the risks and means of mitigation, including means against shadow profiling. If they weren't, they should be by now, and still have means to extricate themselves from it. Facebook is despicable in its practices and I cannot wait to see it die. It's like asking why can't I get my garbage back because I threw it in the re…

Yeah the whole point of GDPR is that it shouldn't be up to individuals to protect themselves from crap like this

> They're on HN so they should be aware of the risks and means of mitigation, including means against shadow profiling. If they weren't, they should be by now, and still have means to extricate themselves from it. Facebook is despicable in its practices and I cannot wait to see it die.

EU society has decided it's despicable, and thanks to our functioning democracy, national and super national governments are taking direct action to protect their citizens. Which is the first mandate of any democratic government.

Venturing into the internet should not require me to do hours worth of research on how to prevent tracking and fingerprinting. Companies should respect my right to privacy, and my government should annihilate companies that refuse to follow the rules. There's a reason why Europe doesn't have an equivalent to the US 2nd amendment, that's because we trust and expect our governments to offer that protection on our behalf. I respect the fact that US culture has a different view, but that doesn't mean I think European's should adopt a similar culture.