Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by xxs » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 9:42 AM UTC

TomMarius wrote: post #134

mziel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"?

This isn't a criminal case.

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

#142

Post by Ftuuky » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 9:44 AM UTC

TomMarius wrote: post #125

anigbrowl wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe hews to somewhat different legal and administrative philosophies from the US, and I don't think the EU is any more corrupt than the US, arguably less so. This subject is discussed very well in a favorite little book, Adversarial Legalism by Robert Kagan.

I don't know what you mean by EU, but most of EU countries except for the west are more corrupt than the US. EDIT: Downvotes? I'm stating facts. How can you downvote facts?

Correct. On average, EU and US have about the same corruption, at least according to the Corruption Index 2017 [0]

[0] https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_percept...

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

#143

Post by wastedhours » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 9:47 AM UTC

zmb_ wrote: post #136

jakobegger wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

IANAL, but if you deem the processing necessary, then you can use "fulfilment of a contract" or "legitimate interests" as your legal basis and argue on that. There's no "right" legal basis, and you can choose whichever you deem necessary.

This just now means you have to be pretty darn sure you're choosing the right one (because, you've always had to protect and limit the amount of information you collect and process, now it's just much more explicit).

As with everything GDPR (and most digital regulations in general), the large companies will win as they have the legal teams to draft the statements and scores of developers in order to get the UX process sorted (or argue their case in the event something goes awry).

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

#144

Post by kitd » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 9:47 AM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #122

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 .
    (b) It really curbs the internet's ability to promote an open information norm.

I find it disingenious of FaceBook to be serving all the EU equally, then claim that Belgium's jurisdiction doesn't cover them because they're based in Ireland. That sounds like having your cake and eating it.

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

#145

Post by dalbasal » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 9:49 AM UTC

zmb_ wrote: post #136

jakobegger wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I think this is just a really hard one to solve....

Cookie restrictions basically amounted to an additional clause in terms and conditions, the thing we're disingenuously treating as a contract.

Realistically no one reads them, not even lawyers. That is the expectation they we re written under. If people actually read before accepting, they would be 250 characters long. Very few services would put up with that much of a roadblock to signing up. Do you really think apple would tolerate an average iPhone sitting unopened for months while the user has the "contract" sitting on their todo pile along with mortgage refinancing and insurance paperwork?

It makes a mockery of the whole thing, reductio ad absurdum for the whole concept of consent...with side effects.

The dynamic this has created is one where the "contract's" job is to reserve all rights that can legally be reserved. There is no trade-off, no reason not to reserve any right. It's just silly to treat these as agreements.

The idea with unbundling is to break this dynamic. Encourage some semblance of informed consent where the user is party to these decisions.

Giving users an all or nothing proposition is a part of the problem. along with the insane levels of user engagement in legal boilerplate that would be required for the system to actually work the way we're pretending it does.

That said, I think it won't work. We'll probably have a more complex version of the current system. Services will still have an incentive to obscure... and turn consent into a click-without-readung-or-fuck-off nag screen. They may just need 4seperate ones now.

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

#146

Post by andrewaylett » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 9:49 AM UTC

zmb_ wrote: post #136

jakobegger wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

It's already the case that many contractual terms will be considered invalid even if both parties agree. In the EU, there are also -- especially for B2C contracts -- a number of terms that are implied and can't be waived.

Examples include distance selling regulations (that provide the right of withdrawal) and limitations on what's considered an acceptable mid-contract price increase. GDPR adds extra restrictions on what privacy rights businesses are allowed to require consumers to opt out of.

So if you've done it correctly, the customer isn't rejecting your terms: they're exercising their options under the contract you've offered them.

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

#147

Post by igorkraw » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 9:49 AM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #131

jakobegger wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Oth: it's a calibration process. If the regulations are to onerous, we can loosen them again, or companies will spring up that make compliance easy. https://www.chargebee.com/ solves the European VAT nightmare for example, until we have harmonization on that front. Is it inefficient? Depends on your model of the world: I'd rather pay a bit more for my goods/services and know that my privacy and data autonomy are preserved, and some people might argue that having the freedom of fiscal policy in differing regions is worth paying chargebee their premium. And if we figure out a way to slide into a better pareto point, cool.

>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.

then they'd outsource it, hide it, whatever. See: tax laws. Law is like exercise, you can't specifically target abdominal fat,nor can you specifically target Fortune100 excesses

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

#148

Post by madshiva » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 9:51 AM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #133

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

if internet internationalizes, why US still use retard units? US and other SF startup have put too much pressure with privacy, it's now the time of payback.

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

#149

Post by dalbasal » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 9:51 AM UTC

kitd wrote: post #144

dalbasal wrote: post #122

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 . (b) It really curbs the internet's ability to promote an open information norm. I find it disingenious of FaceBook to be serving all the EU equally, then claim that Belgium's jurisdiction doesn't cover them because they're based in Ireland. That sounds…

I agree, but they're swimming in disingenuous waters. Surely, they can't run 100 versions of the site to suit 100 legislative/court systems. Well, maybe Facebook can. Can tinder? What about the next Facebook?

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

#150

Post by xxs » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 9:52 AM UTC

emteycz wrote: post #140

xxs wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...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 trackin…

>Up to this point in time, everyone had access to news, videos, science articles etc - for free.

I really don't like your definition of 'free'. wikipedia has been relying on donations for quite some time. guardian.co.uk is one of the recent examples asking for donations and working out for them.

>science articles

Ok that has to be a joke, the paywall journals subscriptions are nothing like ads.

Please, don't conflate any pay method with pay wall (which is a pretty good one). If business cannot retain itself w/o breaking the law and has to shove unwanted images/videos/etc. straight in the face, it may as well not exist. The ads have degraded user experience in so bad ways that having a page with little content and 'next' button just to show more ads is pretty much the norm now.