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

reuters.com

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

#301

Post by wolco2 »

rsync wrote: post #267
hypertele-Xii wrote: post #23

Free exchange among peoples is alive and well. It is easier today to make a website and share anything than it has ever been in the history of civilization. All this is is the reining in of a few greedy corporations that offer information-sharing platforms in exchange for exploitation. New communities will pop up, and old ones resurface.

"Free exchange among peoples is alive and well. It is easier today to make a website and share anything than it has ever been in the history of civilization." This has always been my own reaction to pronouncements that the Internet as we knew it is dead, or over. I'm usually quite optimistic about our ability to freely (and usually without monetary cost) create and share, globally. However, the closure of Nekochan (a…

For all of the reasons free exchange may be happening less so now GDPR is the least of worrying issue facing website owners.

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

#302

Post by xwdv »

ricardo81 wrote: post #185
hypertele-Xii wrote: post #23

Free exchange among peoples is alive and well. It is easier today to make a website and share anything than it has ever been in the history of civilization. All this is is the reining in of a few greedy corporations that offer information-sharing platforms in exchange for exploitation. New communities will pop up, and old ones resurface.

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…

There is one place where you can guarantee your information and exchange of ideas is easily seen, paying little to no money.

Comments.

Comments are the final frontier. Why do you think I never bother getting a personal blog website off the ground? Because the traffic it gets pales in comparison to the audience I get from writing comments. This comment for instance might be seen by several hundred people, all within my target demographic. How many people might see my longform blog content? Maybe dozens if I'm lucky. I've never really written a meaningful blog post, but I've probably written a novel's worth of comments.

And because comments aren't really written for monetary gains, they are one of purest forms of writing left on the internet today. People still write comments liberally and openly, speaking their mind and even voicing unpopular opinions, because they don't give a shit about what Google thinks. Google doesn't read comments. Say the quiet parts loudly.

Maybe someday there will be an age where you can be certain almost every comment you read is already bought and paid for by some corporate interest or a guerrilla advertiser, but fortunately we are still not there yet.

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

#303

Post by cambalache »

taurath wrote: post #161
dantheman wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are people being exploited? Where is the harm?

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…

> How many families have been split because of Facebook radicalization of conservatives? Mine for one.

I am willing to bet your family is saying the same thing but calling it "radicalization of liberals" it works both ways

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

#304

Post by avianlyric »

pilsetnieks wrote: post #296
avianlyric wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 decid…

That was a response to that one person about their own personal situation. By context I can assume that they know what they're doing. You can be in full support of the law while still cautioning to avoid the criminals. The law does exist, especially in the EU where they're from (at least until the end of the year) but there are wolves about. You should still protect yourself if you can.

Check the usernames. I am that person.

Your argument amounts to little more than victim blaming, and does nothing to help those who don’t have the knowledge to protect themselves.

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

#305

Post by segfaultbuserr »

wpietri wrote: post #297
ricardo81 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think this has stopped working not because of platform fear, but because it no longer solves a problem. Back in the day, good content was scarce and discovery was hard. These days neither is true. If my to-read list weren't already overflowing, 30 minutes poking around on Twitter would fill it right up.

+1. Twitter's timeline """solved""" [0] the content recommendation and scalability problems in forums and mailing lists. The large newsgroups in the late 90s Usenet were already unreadable (unless you have an elaborate filter), but all Twitter needs is to ask their users to follow people relevant to their interests.

[0] Of course only partially "solved" with many limitations. Just like how Twitter's predecessors Reddit and Hacker News "solved" the same problem by voting with their respective limitations.

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

#306

Post by kennywinker »

fastball wrote: post #118
furyg3 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood this. If the freedoms outlined in the constitution are universal and inalienable, shouldn't the US also apply them, well, universally? Like do you believe in them or not?

The purpose of the US was to protect these rights for their own citizens / residents. Protecting those rights for the entire world is a bit out-of-scope.

There's a difference between preventing american companies from violating these rights abroad, and actively protecting those rights everywhere in the world. i.e. one is a lot easier to enforce, since the US gov has jurisdiction over US companies.

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

#307

Post by ricardo81 »

wpietri wrote: post #297
ricardo81 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think this has stopped working not because of platform fear, but because it no longer solves a problem. Back in the day, good content was scarce and discovery was hard. These days neither is true. If my to-read list weren't already overflowing, 30 minutes poking around on Twitter would fill it right up.

Think there's a bit chicken and egg with that one. Back in the day Google relied on DMOZ (and perhaps relies on Wiki a little nowadays, WRT knowledge entities). Search (and social) rely on signals to indicate that something is of relevance... you're sort of implying that the monopolies and their single perspectives on how information should be ordered is satisfactory for us right now.

Sometimes there's 10's, 100's or 1000's of pages/sites that are relevant to what we are searching for. All I'd say is that if we diversified the way in which we search/discover new information a little bit more, there's less reliance on a platform or a single algorithm- to me that sounds healthier.

It is totally worth remembering that as much as the likes of Google and FB control a huge share of browsing time and clicks, their algos don't make them the arbiters of truth and information discovery. Sounds quite daft to say it but that is pretty much what the reality is of the modern web- if the portals don't want to rank you, you aren't seen.

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

#308

Post by adventured »

stickfigure wrote: post #11

This is the balkanization of the internet. We've lived through a brief period of free exchange among peoples, but it's soon over. I predict only one viable future for all technology companies, big and small: Pick a single national jurisdiction, keep your employees and servers inside it.

> but it's soon over.

It's not soon over. It has been over for many years now.

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

#309

Post by bumblebritches5 »

stickfigure wrote: post #11

This is the balkanization of the internet. We've lived through a brief period of free exchange among peoples, but it's soon over. I predict only one viable future for all technology companies, big and small: Pick a single national jurisdiction, keep your employees and servers inside it.

That's what the EU gets for trying to meddle in the affairs of companies based in America.

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

#310

Post by avianlyric »

bonoboTP wrote: post #300
avianlyric wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really sure why any of that matters. It’s pretty simple, I would rather have my data stored somewhere I have some level of recourse for privacy violations. Even if that recourse is long drawn out and difficult, than somewhere I have no recourse, and never will have any recourse. I really don’t understand why you’re struggling to understand that. Talking about the relative merits of different governments is comple…

Just don't overestimate the effect of the data location. You have other tools as well, including controlling more tightly what information you share on platforms like Facebook. Now surely, they do track us regardless, shadow profiles, like buttons etc. Also on the other side of things, does it harm me more if a foreign government holds information on me, random Joe, or if my own government holds the same info? Which…

> Also on the other side of things, does it harm me more if a foreign government holds information on me, random Joe, or if my own government holds the same info?

Might be a good question for Kim Dotcom. Regardless of your views on his various business, it hard to explain how the US arresting a non-US citizen outside of the US isn’t a huge and worrying overstep by the US.

Now I probably don’t need to worry about a Kim Dotcom style raid on my home, but I see no reason why I should make it easy for the US to do that if they wanted too.

And regardless of hypothetical harms by the US government. Privacy is my right, and I’ll defend it. Why on earth should I be comfortable with my data being taken by governments around the world that don’t share my world view? (And the US government certainly doesn’t share my world views).

Once again, at least I can hold my government accountable. I notionally understand U.K. law, and the U.K. legal system, and thus what abuses I might be subject too. I see no reason why I should have to learn about US law and the US legal system, just to use the internet from my computer in the U.K.

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