Live data from Hacker News

24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

identityblog.com

81–90 of 222 posts

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#81
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Semantics here - if they aren't abiding, you are right, it is illegal. But I'm asking more along the lines of 'why' is that illegal. Is that data privacy an inalienable, non-contract-surrendable right? That seems ridiculously draconian.

It seems strange to call a liberal definition of rights "draconian". There must be a better adjective.

I think taking the discussion to rights is just a bad idea in the first place. Stick with what's in the law, and argue morality without appealing to rights.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#82
post #45
post #14

Maybe it's my unenlightened American perspective coming out here, but why is this a big deal? You chose to use the Facebook service, you chose to provide this information to them, and you chose to agree to their terms of service. Facebook isn't a government agency, it's a private organization that has persuaded people to give it armloads of data about themselves, and uses that for whatever completely legal purposes i…

Bullshit, it is not "completely voluntary". When everyone is using a communication service and there is no alternative. They claim to have a billion users. Short it is a monopoly, they have a lot of power and when you start to abuse it, like forcing users to accept your unfair terms of service, the government comes into play. I never heard that Google doesn't remove stuff when you remove them inside your service. The…

I remember a while back when there was some commotion about Google not necessarily deleting your emails even when you delete them off Gmail. What they did was they kept your email for an amount of time for ad purposes.

Just did some research while writing this post and it seems that Google changed their ToC for Gmail from deleting emails within 60 days of being deleted by the user to "make reasonable efforts to remove deleted information from our systems as quickly as is practical".

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#83
post #70

DOWNLOAD a copy of your personal data here: https://www.facebook.com/settings Click 'Download a Copy'

That'll get you about 1% of the data Facebook actually hold about you.

Yes. Its for people to see what kind of data is readily available and what isn't.

I know someone here mentioned why don't they set up a site where anyone can access it.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#85

What's the deal with "Europe" vs Facebook? Is anyone else catching a little bit of nationalism?

Europe has strong data protection laws that the US does not have, so it is entirely apt to say that it is Europe vs Facebook. Could you say that it is Max vs Facebook, yes, you'd be just as right, however these rights affect every single person in Europe that is browsing the internet and comes across a site with a Facebook like button.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#86

What's the deal with "Europe" vs Facebook? Is anyone else catching a little bit of nationalism?

I find it funny and a little sad that a single US corp is being pitted against an entire continent. We've all known some corps and individuals have had more wealth than entire countries but this is something different. Eventually I think we'll see the EU become more and more like the Federal US.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#87
post #2

Honest question: Why is Facebook governed, at least in part, by European law? The reason I ask is that the United States has a lot of trouble enforcing its copyright laws abroad (which is good in my opinion), but Facebook and Google seem to bend to European laws regarding privacy and transparency.

>The reason I ask is that the United States has a lot of >trouble enforcing its copyright laws abroad.

Note this is entirely different when a company has a presence in the US, any of the servers are in the US, or even if the DNS servers are in the US.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#88
post #14

Maybe it's my unenlightened American perspective coming out here, but why is this a big deal? You chose to use the Facebook service, you chose to provide this information to them, and you chose to agree to their terms of service. Facebook isn't a government agency, it's a private organization that has persuaded people to give it armloads of data about themselves, and uses that for whatever completely legal purposes i…

Your first problem is "completely legal" -- you seem to assume that American law is controlling. Unfortunately, legal is place sensitive.

In order to do business in the EU you generally have to comply with their laws. One of the privileges the EU generally grants their citizens is that companies must, on demand, produce all data they store about that person. Why should this be true? Because EU citizens living in democracies want it to be so.

If fb doesn't like it they are free to not do business there. Otherwise, they have to comply.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#89
post #7

Man I want a copy of my report. Considering they're supposedly all about eliminating privacy, shouldn't they want to make all this accessible?

Hmmm, I'm an Irish citizen, although I live in the US. I have often wondered at the weakness of US data protection laws, and this might make for an interesting study.

I've seen friends try that are currently studying in the US, but are originally from The Netherlands, and Facebook responded saying that they are in contract with the US company, and thus are not eligible to receive said data. I personally plan on getting a VPN in the UK/The Netherlands and asking for my data, to have it sent to my grandparents address. Hopefully at that point they will send me the data as requested.

I am technically a Dutch citizen since I still have my Dutch passport, but I live in the United States with a green card.

Re: 24 year old student lights match: Europe versus Facebook

#90
post #56

I really hope that nobody here is actually surprised that that is the true purpose of the 'like' button. After all, the users get just about nothing out of it, if you like something that much an email will do just as well (to the select number of people that you think your liking a particular subject will appeal to). The main winners are the publishers (they hope for some more traffic) and facebook (by extending your…

It was so successful because these useless "Social Media Experts" needed a metric to justify their job.

Nobody asked the techies if this could be a trojan horse.

Post reply on HN