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"Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

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Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#4

Post by ceejayoz »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #2

My prediction, facebook gets fined something like ~12 million euros, eu bureaucrats shake their hands, facebook finds a different way to do the same thing. Definitely not even close to 32B

The EU doesn’t play around in this realm.

1.2 billion fine for an earlier incident: https://www.edpb.europa.eu/news/news/2023/12-billion-euro-fi...

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#5

Post by Waterluvian »

Every story like this has me thinking about two things:

1. Companies have no soul. They are, by design, just chasing revenue. Everything else is just a risk to be factored.

2. There are real humans at these companies who choose to take part in the business and design and engineering, etc.

I don’t think these humans have no soul (though some won’t), and I don’t think they’re stupid (though some are). I think it’s just very, very easy to create a system of people collectively doing evil things where no one person carries the burden of evil individually enough to really feel sick enough with what they’re contributing to.

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#7

Post by davedx »

This is an incredibly scummy and devious implementation of user tracking. I think META shareholders should hold onto their hats with this one.

@dang maybe add a $ to the 32B? I see B so often with AI Models that I think the currency symbol would be useful in this link title

Re: "Localhost tracking" explained. It could cost Meta €32B

#9

Post by jmyeet »

I'm reminded of zombie cookies [1].

This was 15+ years ago now but Verizon (and others?) used Flash (because browsers still shipped with support for that in the 2000s) to create an undeletable cookie. This was settled for low 7 figures.

Privacy legislation has advanced a lot since then and the EU doesn't play around with GDPR violations, particularly when it's so egregious. I don't expect a $32B fine or settlement but it won't surprise me if this costs Meta $1B+.

[1]: https://www.propublica.org/article/verizon-to-pay-1.35-milli...

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