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Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

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Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#101

Post by marvindanig »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #89
marvindanig wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

oh, yes! i remember those angry troll comments on HN as well. as if flattening all UI was the only thing that mattered and everything else was skeuomorphism. no sweetie, not everything needs to be a pictogram. and everything you see or use online is skeuomorphism off of something in the physical world at some level. yeah, that flat design also. Edit: Added "at some level" after helpful comments below.

If everything is something, then something isn't a useful category. Sure, all digital design is in some sense and to some extent a metaphor for real world objects. But skeuomorphism was always referring to things that were to an extreme extent following the design language of the real world, well beyond what was required by their digital constraints or expectations of the user. That is a useful category of visual lan…

oh yes, absolutely. fixed my comments above.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#102

Post by morgannewman »

wackget wrote: post #84

> The EU decision will not have direct consequences for users, unfortunately, as it can be appealed to. Such an appeal would lead to a lengthy judicial process. So companies can flout the law for years, making massive profits, and continue to do so for as long as they can string along an appeal process? Seems like a pretty nice loophole.

No post body was provided.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#103

Post by riskable »

spritefs wrote: post #65
devjab wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect some car companies may be. I'm not completely sure but I think we had to allow Skoda to track us when we paid them to turn on the Apple connection stuff in the car. I'm sorry I can't be more specific or technical than that, but I've never had a drivers license and drive a cargo bike, so the car is sort of my wife's domain that I know very little about. If it was an option, I don't see why anyone would allow…

The car location thing is an actual issue that needs to be legislated away. Companies like bmw do this with irremovable sim cards and location data Why the fuck does my car need an internet connection when nav isn't being used? Why are the sim cards irremovable? Why is an internet connection necessary for heated seats? Principle of least privilege. These automakers can fuck off out of the data brokering industry with…

> Why the fuck does my car need an internet connection when nav isn't being used?

So they can update the firmware to fix (recall) issues instead of having you go into the dealership and pay someone to hook up a device to your car to do the same. This counts as 1-4 hours of labor--depending on how much of a pain in the ass it is to access all the car's ECUs/MCUs/systems.

I think it's important to note that the car only needs to be online for this to work. The automotive manufacturer does not need to know a damned thing about its location or regularly track your car's movements for this to work. A simple wifi connection to the Internet would work for the same purpose.

You should also know that newer electric vehicles have built-in Wifi for communicating with charging stations so they can keep track of various data fields about the batteries (e.g. temperature, charge state, etc). No reason why they couldn't also use that to download firmware updates when necessary.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#104

Post by z3c0 »

Bilal_io wrote: post #13
luckylion wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nike will be, they're also requiring you to consent or get out (and also set lots of cookies without consent, but I guess it's fine if you're not a social media company).

I am guilty of this myself, but people should really vote with their money against companies with horrible practices.

I agree, but the reality is that the most egregious offenders of consumer rights tend to control the markets they exist in, and the diligence required to effectively "vote with your dollar" is enough to overwhelm even the most staunch among us.

I've always found Ivy Lee's essay "Mr. Jones' Dilemma" to be a great summation of this problem. I'm having a hard time finding it online, but I'll link to it if I find it.

Edit: can't find the essay anywhere, but it's the intro to this book: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36077624-mr-lee-s-public...

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#105

Post by izzydata »

p0pcult wrote: post #98
ls15 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certain companies can

Would it wreck the legal framework to institute a concept wherein you can appeal, but if, on appeal, the lower court ruling holds, the punishment/fine is retroactive to the date of the lower court ruling? I.e., make it so that there is no free pass to continuing presumptively illegal activity.

Wouldn't it be that way already? The punishment even for the whole extended period of time is still often nothing to big tech. Punishments need to be tailored to those being punished to cause equal effect.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#106

Post by criddell »

hedora wrote: post #59

Cool. So, how does this impact consumers that never used Facebook, but that have shadow profiles for social network inference and ad tracking? Presumably, since Facebook has no way to contact those people, they will just shut down the no-logged-in-but-tracked half of their business in Europe? (If you don't know what I mean by shadow profile: When you first create a Facebook account, it helpfully produces a prepopulat…

It doesn't impact those consumers, but that wasn't what this action by the EU was trying to stop. It looks like this suit as all about users of Facebook and Instagram being forced to agree to tracking to use the service.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#107

Post by imiric »

wpietri wrote: post #82
maldev wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook's future isn't in the social media space though. Most of their endeavors are in VR and other cutting edge technologies, hence the name change to Meta. I wouldn't be surprised if they saw the writing on the walls years ago. They've been hiring AI, and VR researchers for years now and are the industry leader in VR at least.

But a leader in what exactly? I have been looking for years for actual usage stats. E.g., MAU and UAM for VR headsets, especially ones broken out by length of ownership. I get that people are buying Oculus units because of the hype, but is there much sustained usage? If so, what exactly is keeping people engaged once the novelty wears off? As comparison, look at Amazon's smart speakers. $10 billion spent, lots of hyp…

Meta is betting on the long term. They're the leader of a very niche market _now_, but as XR technology improves, that market will only grow, and Meta will be ready for it, with years ahead of the competition at that point.

That's their bet, anyway, and we can speculate whether it will come to pass or not.

I'm inclined to think that the tech will eventually become mainstream, when headsets are as comfortable to wear as glasses. It's a prime opportunity for Apple to jump in near the tipping point, and claim to be the innovator, once again. It would be the mainstream push the industry needs, at least.

I'm less confident that Meta's verse will succeed, though. They've shown to be incapable of delivering an appealing product people want to spend hours in. And the Meta brand is tarnished beyond repair, no matter how many rebrandings they go through.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#108

Post by nobody9999 »

seanw444 wrote: post #100
wackget wrote: post #84

> The EU decision will not have direct consequences for users, unfortunately, as it can be appealed to. Such an appeal would lead to a lengthy judicial process. So companies can flout the law for years, making massive profits, and continue to do so for as long as they can string along an appeal process? Seems like a pretty nice loophole.

[flagged]

kinda like what radical reactionary (R) state legislatures have been doing with abortion restrictions since 1973 until the Dobbs decision, right?

Funny that. Not.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#109

Post by zelphirkalt »

layer8 wrote: post #93
alkonaut wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they challenge it, surely they still pay the fines retroactively if they lose? And given their size and how the fines are structured, couldn't it be very expensive to keep this in courts when it looks like a losing case on paper?

The may believe it’s worth it vs. the loss of ad income.

In a just world, of course they would have to pay back all that ad income, because as it turns out, they obtained it illegally and have been told so. Merely them thinking that it was not illegal and going to court does not make it suddenly legal and just to keep it. Like any ordinary citizen, of course they would stop doing the thing, that they have been warned about to be illegal, riiiight?

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#110

Post by mpweiher »

wackget wrote: post #84

> The EU decision will not have direct consequences for users, unfortunately, as it can be appealed to. Such an appeal would lead to a lengthy judicial process. So companies can flout the law for years, making massive profits, and continue to do so for as long as they can string along an appeal process? Seems like a pretty nice loophole.

That's not a "loophole", that's called living in a country of laws with due process.
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