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Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

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Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#101

Post by rolenthedeep »

crazygringo wrote: post #88
jdiez17 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This decision, as I understand it, renders large swathes of tech service revenue models untenable. To be honest, good riddance. If it is no longer possible to offer users a "free" service in exchange for extremely invasive spying and psychological manipulation (without explicit consent [0]), it forces companies to 1) innovate in order to offer such services for a sustainable price, and 2) encourages competition fro…

But why do you think legislation should be the one forcing that choice on everyone, rather than the market allowing consumers to choose? The issue isn't what we personally like or prefer for ourselves -- it's more about when we think it's legitimate to take away the right of businesses to experiment with business models, and of consumers to be free to enter into the tradeoffs they prefer. Why shouldn't a consumer be…

"the market" isn't some omnipotent magical force that inherently provides all options.

Given the current status quo, it's pretty clear that "the market" isn't solving this problem. Legislation is needed because "the market" has failed to regulate itself.

"the market" does not work for consumers, it's shaped for and by sellers.

Left to its own devices, capitalism creates conditions that are explicitly harmful to the population. Look at the sheer amount of labor protections we have. "the market" didn't stop employers from enforcing 80 hour work weeks and child labor, and it absolutely would not have without legislation.

Capitalism isn't magic. "the market" doesn't solve problems on its own.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#102

Post by jefftk »

robin_reala wrote: post #97
crazygringo wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why do you think legislation should be the one forcing that choice on everyone, rather than the market allowing consumers to choose? The issue isn't what we personally like or prefer for ourselves -- it's more about when we think it's legitimate to take away the right of businesses to experiment with business models, and of consumers to be free to enter into the tradeoffs they prefer. Why shouldn't a consumer be…

And that’s fine: that consumer can choose to opt in.

Except they can't. If a service is only profitable with personalized advertising they aren't allowed to say "if you want to use this service you need to allow us to do personalized advertising".

Which means that in the future if there's a service I might want to use which is in this category and if I don't mind having my data used to personalize my advertising, I don't have a choice: the service won't exist.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#103

Post by sp332 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #22
britneybitch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Child labor laws and minimum wage also made some revenue models untenable, and the world is better off for it. I want to live in a world where businesses can profit without having to spy on people. This is a good step in that direction.

Spy on people? If you like a post on Instagram it is core to their service that they log that information. If they didn't, the app wouldn't work very well.

If I navigate to a page that embeds a Facebook "Like" button, Facebook tracks that I visited that page even if I don't click the button.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#104

Post by benlivengood »

Nextgrid wrote: post #29
friedman23 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If nobody is willing to pay for your product, maybe it shouldn't exist? Hm, so you think it's better for the world for poor people to not have access to information via tools like Google? I think the fact that you need to use emotionally loaded language like spyware to make your argument really detracts from it.

Advertisers aren't altruistic and don't voluntarily subsidise poor people's access; advertisers want to target people with money. Poor people being able to "freeload" is a side effect of imperfect ad targeting - if advertisers could reliably identify someone's financial standing without hurting conversion rates they'd absolutely do so and deny access to poor people. If nothing gets done against ad targeting and non-c…

China's social credit score is the future GDPR is working to prevent.

It's actually a bit worse for poor people; they don't get ignored by advertisers and instead are directly targeted for highly abusive lending practices (payday loans, rent to own, outright scams relying on desperation). There's an advertiser for every market segment.

EDIT: I know the economic arguments for high interest loans, but the fact is that they trap poor people in a cycle of poverty. It's no good pointing out that people's long-term economic prospects are quantifiably terrible without using that as an argument for effective regulation and social safety nets to break the cycle.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#105

Post by marginalia_nu »

whimsicalism wrote: post #6

[flagged]

Really? I think this was extremely predictable. This is implementing the GDPR according to the spirit of the law. That is, to make personal information a liability.

The other shoe was always going to drop.

Any other interpretation including just slapping an "I agree to have my data collected" dialog on top of your product and proceeding as though the law didn't exist has been naively optimistic wishful thinking from adtech's side.

The intent of the law was never to make companies introduce new waivers to their terms of service, or to get websites to have annoying popovers you need to dismiss in order to use them.

> continuous free-riding off of the US in [...] tech

And how much of that tech sector in turn free-rides on European software like Linux, cURL and MariaDB/MySQL?

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#106

Post by williamdclt »

malyk wrote: post #94
elcomet wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And no one will ever give them permission. Why would you?

If I'm going to be shown ads I might as well see ones that I'm more likely to be interested in.

- not if it comes at the price of huge invasion of privacy

- Given the incredible amount of data they have, I'm constantly amazed at how bad FB/Amazon/others are at suggesting what I'm likely to be interested in

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#107

Post by dylan604 »

tpxl wrote: post #61
dylan604 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one thing to provide on opt-in for new users, but will this mean retroactively resetting ALL users to no?

Reset all preferences to 'no' for affected users, and ask them on the next login whether they would like this or not. Simple.

Simple for you and I, but not so simple if you're a lawyer working for Meta that can twist words and interpretations of those words strung together into sentences in a legal contract. At the end of the day, you and I don't matter in our interpretations. It is the lawyers and judges. Who do you trust?

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#108

Post by samwillis »

In the background to all this do note that the "number 2" executive at Meta is a former UK Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg [0].

Meta see the regulatory situation in the EU and UK as a potentially existential risk. They know what they are doing is bad and lobbying is their number one tactic. They are at the "cigarette company" level of trying to prevent regulation of a business model that is ultimately at risk of being legislated out of existence.

0: https://about.meta.com/media-gallery/executives/

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#109

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

whimsicalism wrote: post #6

[flagged]

> technological innovation

Is that what the surveillance capitalists call it? Loot and pillage as quick as you can before regulation catches up? These lunatics have had the run of the asylum for over a decade now- it's about time.

Also- that source says nothing about Europe's situation being due to unpredicatable regulation.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#110

Post by Tainnor »

whimsicalism wrote: post #85
Tainnor wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feel free to downvote if you feel, as per HN guidelines, that I am not contributing to the discussion. I feel it doesn't, as it doesn't even try to present any sort of nuanced argument, it's really just nationalistic flame-bait. It's one thing to express the opinion that one worries that excessive regulation might mean a competitive disadvantage in the long run. It's quite another to accuse the whole continent of E…

Free-rider (not loader!) has an economic meaning. It is easy to attack a post when you put words in peoples' mouths. The EU shares common regulatory characteristics as well as a common capital market often. Comparing the two systems is not "nationalistic flamebait" and I find it sort of absurd to suggest so. Different economic systems have an impact on people's well being. I didn't realize it was verboten to suggest…

Note that the article you linked has been flagged the last time it was submitted to HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30569887

I think that's pretty telling.

You're not doing "a comparison between different economic systems" in the sense of wanting to compare trade-offs. The picture you're painting is so one-dimensional that it's no basis for discussion. It's just a rallying point for people to argue whether Europe sucks or the US sucks.

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