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Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

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Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#131

Two kind of related points. The jurisdiction stuff is disturbing. Having separate rules/rulings for Belgium, Turkey, Venezuela, etc... It's (a) not practical and will end up helping incumbents .(b) It really curbs the internet's ability to promote an open information norm. Privacy is an issue and we need to do something about it. But, I have a real feeling cencorship, corporate-protectionism, copyright and other agen…

I’m looking forward to the GDPR. It seems to target all the failures of the cookie law. The GDPR will not allow blanket consent statements, it will not allow “permission bundling” (eg. allow acces to everything or you can’t use the site). The changes Twitter rolled out in preparation of the GDPR look like a good thing. We’ll see how it turns out, but I think the GDPR will actually force companies to change, beyond co…

Idk... Some of it could be good, but a legislative approach like this could just turn into a compliance bureaucracy that doesn't help much, but has all sorts of side effects. A lot of people are keen on industry regulations (which GDPR sort of is) but i think are not aware of (a) how bad the bad ones are and (b) the very dominant corporate/incumbent bias they give a market. You can't start a financial firm, tobacco company, etc. There are good sides to that, but some serious (and largely unacknowledged, at least in Europe) aspects to it too.

I realize generality and such get in the way of this, but... I think it would have been better if this move specifically targeted the 100 biggest companies, who have the scale an resources to actually use all this tracking data.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#132
post #95
post #2

>“The cookies and pixels we use are industry standard technologies and enable hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow their businesses and reach customers across the EU,” said Facebook’s VP of public policy for EMEA If it is "industry standard", does that make it ethical?

of course not I also don't see any advantage for the user, getting ads is not in their interest.

It is, if having access to the site is in their interest. The site needs ads to survive, they are a form of payment.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#133

Two kind of related points. The jurisdiction stuff is disturbing. Having separate rules/rulings for Belgium, Turkey, Venezuela, etc... It's (a) not practical and will end up helping incumbents .(b) It really curbs the internet's ability to promote an open information norm. Privacy is an issue and we need to do something about it. But, I have a real feeling cencorship, corporate-protectionism, copyright and other agen…

> The jurisdiction stuff is disturbing. Having separate rules/rulings for Belgium, Turkey, Venezuela, etc... It's (a) not practical and will end up helping incumbents I don’t think so. Only really large corporations are able to serve all areas anyways. Most small companies in the world already cannot afford to serve multiple jurisdictions.

I disagree. The internet changes this, internationalizes a lot. Also, thinking of this as "companies serving markets" is (imo) a bad frame.

HN is serving all countries right now, as it did when there were 54 people reading it the day it launched.

Geographic borders may be relevant online, but they may not.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#134
post #29
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But op-int for what? For being tracked? Using you data? Just showing you an ad?

You're supposed to enumerate all uses of the data (and they need to be sufficiently detailed and specific). The user has a choice to opt-in/out of each of them separately. There is currently no detailed description as to what the definition of "sufficiently" is. For example: - can I use your data to build a targeting machine learning model? - can I use it to target you? - do I need specific opt-in for every model? Mo…

Defend it? What happened with "innocent until proven guilty"?

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#135
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there should be a central clearinghouse for people who don't want to be tracked by certain sites. How can you tell facebook to not track you without a facebook account? The best you can do is block various known IPs or other patterns which are bound to change over time.

How to tell Facebook that I don't want to be tracked? By not having a fucking Facebook account! it seems to me that's actually the crux of that court decision.

To put it simply: tracking has to be opt-in only. GDPR actually sees about

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#136

Two kind of related points. The jurisdiction stuff is disturbing. Having separate rules/rulings for Belgium, Turkey, Venezuela, etc... It's (a) not practical and will end up helping incumbents .(b) It really curbs the internet's ability to promote an open information norm. Privacy is an issue and we need to do something about it. But, I have a real feeling cencorship, corporate-protectionism, copyright and other agen…

I’m looking forward to the GDPR. It seems to target all the failures of the cookie law. The GDPR will not allow blanket consent statements, it will not allow “permission bundling” (eg. allow acces to everything or you can’t use the site). The changes Twitter rolled out in preparation of the GDPR look like a good thing. We’ll see how it turns out, but I think the GDPR will actually force companies to change, beyond co…

> it will not allow “permission bundling” (eg. allow acces to everything or you can’t use the site)

This is something I have not been able to come to terms with. I can understand requiring express consent to each item individually, rather than burying everything into a long ToS. But what I cannot understand is forcing me (as a service provider) into a contract with a customer even if the customer rejects some of my terms.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#138
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

of course not I also don't see any advantage for the user, getting ads is not in their interest.

It is, if having access to the site is in their interest. The site needs ads to survive, they are a form of payment.

...or the site dies if ads are non-compliant. If there is some vacuum, it'd be filled by other monetization schemes.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#139

Two kind of related points. The jurisdiction stuff is disturbing. Having separate rules/rulings for Belgium, Turkey, Venezuela, etc... It's (a) not practical and will end up helping incumbents .(b) It really curbs the internet's ability to promote an open information norm. Privacy is an issue and we need to do something about it. But, I have a real feeling cencorship, corporate-protectionism, copyright and other agen…

> The jurisdiction stuff is disturbing.

That's like saying that democracy is disturbing, but it's the best we have got. FB should respect laws in Belgium, that's it.

I don't trust "governance", I trust "government": because it is only at a national level that we see a bit of democratic accountability.

Re: Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe

#140
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, if having access to the site is in their interest. The site needs ads to survive, they are a form of payment.

...or the site dies if ads are non-compliant. If there is some vacuum, it'd be filled by other monetization schemes.

What other monetization schemes? Noone is going to pay for access to a page with funny pictures, the site will cease to exist. Everything else will be behind a paywall and you call that an improvement? Up to this point in time, everyone had access to news, videos, science articles etc - for free. Those who didn't like being tracked had numerous options to avoid it. They also had the option to stop using these tracking sites. How is 13 year old poor kid going to read the news after everything is behind a paywall? How about a poor adult?
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