Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent • Hacker News Board

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#181

Post by dilemma » Sat, Sep 16, 2017, 12:50 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #94

parthdesai wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free Basics and Internet.org were two of the most disgusting moves i have seen from fb. I wonder if any of Indian workers working at fb questioned zuck about it at one of the his town-hall meetings ( if it is possible to do so).

I don't understand people's objections. Can you clarify? As someone who was too poor to afford internet for years, I would have adored such a deal. It would have greatly improved my standard of living, and to me I feel like the objections come from people with no understanding of what poverty is like. It really feels like looking a gift horse in the mouth; I feel like the benefits of free internet for the poor far ou…

It's not free Internet.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#182

Post by dilemma » Sat, Sep 16, 2017, 1:02 PM UTC

mahyarm wrote: post #92

aaron-lebo wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes me weirdly happy as an American to see it happen. What happens when instead of massive, boring, soulless, mediocre corporations like Facebook serving 2 billion sharecroppers, we've got multiple or even dozens of smaller networks serving regions and niches? That has the potential for innovation we can't begin to understand. Facebook is akin to McDonald's not only spreading internationally but also replacing a…

Don't worry, Tencent is just as much souless and bigcorp than facebook. I would say even more comparing what my friends have said about working at tencent vs facebook.

what do your friend say about Tencent vs Facebook?

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#183

Post by baxtr » Sat, Sep 16, 2017, 1:54 PM UTC

kbart wrote: post #105

baxtr wrote: post #55

Well 1.2 million euros fine is nothing to Facebook. That won't stop them from anything

That's just a warning shot. Next time they get caught for the same thing it won't end so well, so it's just like saying: "stop what you are doing or there will be consequences, here's some little fine so you take us seriously".

ok, makes sense. I didn't realize it was for 3 users only. I still wonder how impressed they really are...

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#184

Post by dreamfactored » Sat, Sep 16, 2017, 7:06 PM UTC

alexasmyths wrote: post #87

dreamfactored wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>kind of like SF vs. Dallas Which would make the US no more homogenous than Germany at least. > There are basically no places in Europe with a critical mass of early adopters for anything in tech Finland pretty much invented the mobile business (and the US still lags Europe), and European startup culture is very strong in London, the Nordics, and Berlin, (with Paris and Amsterdam also starting to make a play). Where…

Finland is smaller than Los Angeles. Neither it, nor even Germany/UK/France have a critical mass of tech people or early adopters. There isn't very strong 'startup culture' anywhere in Europe, unfortnately. You listed basically all of the notable startups to come out of Europe in one sentence, which is not good. I've lived all over Europe as well as the US, I'm aware of the differences. There just isn't a strong clus…

> Finland is smaller than Los Angeles.

Yes Finland is smaller than Los Angeles and yet pretty much invented mobile - that would seem to invalidate your point about scale. Scale removes agility and ability to innovate, it's the sole competitive edge of startups. It's also why the US mobile market still lags blocs made up of smaller markets like Asia and Europe.

> There isn't very strong 'startup culture' anywhere in Europe, unfortnately.

The Nordics would disagree and has a track record to back that up.

> You listed basically all of the notable startups to come out of Europe in one sentence, which is not good.

Hardly, I just pulled a small handful out of thin air. Here's a bunch more - https://medium.com/startup-grind/the-100-startups-which-rais..., http://www.wired.co.uk/article/europes-100-hottest-startups-...

> There just isn't a strong cluster of tech-types, nor strong movements of early adopters for most things in Europe.

I've visited a lot of the US via tech conferences (largely in college towns and hi-tech hubs). The US has no claim whatsoever here. I'd say it was possibly marginally behind Europe and way behind Asia, where I visit frequently for business. I'm including LA, SF, NY in this assessment which are starting to look like provincial towns compared to the likes of Shanghai or London. The US is notably more advanced at marketing, which is what you are seeing here; if the US had anything to compare to Shenzhen for example we would be hearing nothing except stories about US leading the world in cutting edge HW innovation from hacker-makers. I was going to add that the US was very much ahead in tech financing (and it is compared to Europe, which makes US tech itself look comparatively weak if anything) - but I think the Chinese gov is considerably outspending SV now.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#185

Post by dreamfactored » Sat, Sep 16, 2017, 7:14 PM UTC

davemp wrote: post #96

dreamfactored wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopolies are bad for consumers. The Chinese government is protecting Chinese markets from global monopolies (and also acting as the world's biggest innovation VC). Other countries have been asleep at the wheel and are only just starting to wake up with uber and airbnb. (Also the fact that fb has been caught targeting Kremlin propaganda to voters in foreign elections makes me wonder if they will get shuttered in a l…

> The Chinese government is protecting Chinese [control over citizens] markets > and also acting as the world's biggest innovation VC Wew. > Other countries have been asleep at the wheel Calm down with the CN propaganda.

It's a general question of national security for any country, and in the broader sense which also includes control of their economies. The Chinese have been very smart about this, other countries should look at this. I don't think that's pushing a pro-Chinese line so much as about other countries needing to learn something about protecting national interest from 'foreign data invaders' (which have been mainly US to date but which I can see starting to include Russia and China)

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#186

Post by dreamfactored » Sat, Sep 16, 2017, 7:32 PM UTC

TheKarateKid wrote: post #175

dreamfactored wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopolies are bad for consumers. The Chinese government is protecting Chinese markets from global monopolies (and also acting as the world's biggest innovation VC). Other countries have been asleep at the wheel and are only just starting to wake up with uber and airbnb. (Also the fact that fb has been caught targeting Kremlin propaganda to voters in foreign elections makes me wonder if they will get shuttered in a l…

There's a difference between protecting from global monopolies, and totally eliminating any competition. The fact that the Chinese sanctioned companies become monopolies themselves is even more proof that it's about nationalism than protection from monopolies.

> it's about nationalism than protection from monopolies

Well if I was Chinese I guess I'd hope my government was making some effort to protect the national interest at least.

Of course they are developing their own monopolies and have some pretty terrifying social control programs in the works. That can be criticised in its own right and hopefully it will be. But to try and make the case that FB is a benevolent saviour of the Chinese citizenry from their evil government is nonsense and whataboutery. If you must believe in the US as some kind of global beacon of free speech and democracy, then at least don't think that just being the lesser of two evils is a really great way to promote this.

The hard problem is that any proprietary social platform has to have a mass of people using it to be particularly useful, and any social platform that big is collecting data that makes it a huge security risk and economic factor at the national level. The only solutions I can think of are to have social networks under national control or to promote interoperability between smaller networks and partition data collection to an acceptable level for national security purposes.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#187

Post by parthdesai » Sat, Sep 16, 2017, 7:48 PM UTC

thecrazyone wrote: post #156

parthdesai wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you know if facebook really cared, they should have provided 1gb for free or something like that.

I don't understand this line of reasoning usually expected of corporations. Why do they have to part with their profits which they have legitimately earned? They can but should not be required or expected to. Why would you not fund another person's internet from your salary? Are profits that much different from salaries?

Sure, so don't expect people to get pissed when you call the service you are going to provide "Internet" or "Basics". That is not Internet. And basics without having access to Google. Yeah sure.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#188

Post by mahyarm » Sat, Sep 16, 2017, 10:55 PM UTC

dilemma wrote: post #182

mahyarm wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't worry, Tencent is just as much souless and bigcorp than facebook. I would say even more comparing what my friends have said about working at tencent vs facebook.

what do your friend say about Tencent vs Facebook?

Tencent is a pretty bad place to work at, how they constantly discarded their work projects, have typical chinese work hours where people sleep under their desk despite being huge co and said other friends who worked there had a bad time. They did like their immediate co-workers although.

While friends and coworkers who work(ed) at facebook have had a much better time, with far more perks, interesting projects work not thrown away and a much better work life balance.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#189

Post by taysic » Sat, Sep 16, 2017, 11:25 PM UTC

krageon wrote: post #115

wbl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really isn't. Competition globally is better for consumers. Imagine if you had to drive only US cars to keep automotive knowledge local.

What Facebook (or for that matter Google) does is not competition. They're far too large to really compete with when you're getting up and running. Everything that even gets close to something they do or might want to do gets bought out. I can't imagine anyone thinks such a situation is in the best interest of the user.

>What Facebook (or for that matter Google) does is not competition.

Why not? Being the first one in and the best at what you do is still competition. Most industries don't get disrupted by a competitor until there is truly some valuable innovation that happened. (ie look at Yahoo and MySpace)

Whenever the government starts to interfere it sounds really good on paper, but it typically is not in the best interest of the user. Existing corporations often use laws to then further eliminate incoming competition.

Re: Spain Fines Facebook Over Tracking Users Without Consent

#190

Post by wbl » Sun, Sep 17, 2017, 4:56 PM UTC

adventured wrote: post #114

tryingagainbro wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can USA wake up one day and decide to impose a 40% tariff without repercussions? Aren't there rules and international trade agreements backed by enforcement mechanisms?

> Can USA wake up one day and decide to impose a 40% tariff without repercussions? Aren't there rules and international trade agreements backed by enforcement mechanisms? You could debate how far the US could go with it before there are serious repercussions. However, several of the big auto-making countries go a great distance out of their way to shield their own domestic auto industries from foreign competition at…

You're ignoring the US consumers who get cheaper and higher quality vehicles from abroad because we don't have protectionist politics on vehicles. Why should I pay more for inferior Detroit cars?