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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

#21

Post by oh_sigh »

jsemrau wrote: post #17
rhizome wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't matter, since it doesn't even make it legal.

Stuff like this makes me so mad. 1. I don't have an account on Facebook. 2. Blocked Facebook domains via /etc/hosts 3. Use ghostery And despite all of these steps it feels like we are wasting our brightest minds to always be a step ahead in surveilling what the humans of this world are doing to exploit it for targeted advertising.

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.

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

#22

Post by volgo »

oh_sigh wrote: post #21
jsemrau wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff like this makes me so mad. 1. I don't have an account on Facebook. 2. Blocked Facebook domains via /etc/hosts 3. Use ghostery And despite all of these steps it feels like we are wasting our brightest minds to always be a step ahead in surveilling what the humans of this world are doing to exploit it for targeted advertising.

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 can you tell facebook to not track you without a facebook account?

That's the wrong question to ask. You shouldn't have to tell it not to track you. That shouldn't be able to do it, unless you explicitly tell them "hey you can track me."

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

#23

Post by iagovar »

mziel wrote: post #16
lbarrow wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "doesn't end up like the cookie law"? I'm an American and don't have much awareness of this other than I've noticed that sites in the EU like the Guardian tend to have annoying banners saying they use cookies at the bottom of their splash screens.

You can read more about the cookie law here: https://www.cookielaw.org/the-cookie-law/ Basically EU wanted sites to obtain consent to use users' cookies (and for the users to give/take away that consent). However, pretty much all the sites just decided to provide you with a banner saying something like "if you're using this site you agree to our cookie policy". Therefore the law became ineffective and just a nuisance…

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

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

#24

Post by Maarten88 »

oh_sigh wrote: post #21
jsemrau wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff like this makes me so mad. 1. I don't have an account on Facebook. 2. Blocked Facebook domains via /etc/hosts 3. Use ghostery And despite all of these steps it feels like we are wasting our brightest minds to always be a step ahead in surveilling what the humans of this world are doing to exploit it for targeted advertising.

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.

Yes, how to tell Facebook?

Someone should invent a http header that lets you signal that you don't want to be tracked. It could be named something like DNT, for do-not-track. People could then set DNT=1 and websites such as Facebook would know not to track you...

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

#25

Post by allthenews »

You know, I am a pretty staunch supporter of minimalistic restrictions on corporate behavior, putting faith instead in markets. But this seems like the kind of problem I'd consider looking to solve through legislation.

Although I should say, not without hesitation, given the extreme discrepancy between rates of change in tech and law. I would hate to see seemingly well meaning legislation passed for something like this and then turned against us by our friends at the NSA, for example.

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

#26

Post by colmvp »

derefr wrote: post #13
fouc wrote: 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?

I think the implication is more, "why are you only paying attention to us ? If you think this is a bad practice, then you should be going after our competitors , too." Corporations tend not to mind if you take away a business strategy of theirs, as long as you take it away from everybody else at the same time. If you only take it away from one corporation, that corporation will be temporarily outcompeted by the corpo…

Funny. If your site drops dramatically on Google's search results, or if YouTube/Facebook bans your account for reasons, tough luck. They are a corporation and can do whatever they want without resorting to any sort of internal consistency.

But heaven forbid governments hold a dominant corporation accountable in the public interest.

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

#27

Post by mtgex »

allthenews wrote: post #25

You know, I am a pretty staunch supporter of minimalistic restrictions on corporate behavior, putting faith instead in markets. But this seems like the kind of problem I'd consider looking to solve through legislation. Although I should say, not without hesitation, given the extreme discrepancy between rates of change in tech and law. I would hate to see seemingly well meaning legislation passed for something like th…

We have lots of restrictions on corporate behavior because markets do not solve human problems, they solve corporate problems.

The corporate response to long hours and low pay is to put up suicide nets. In the U.S. we have minimum wage, hourly restrictions, break, and overtime laws.

You can't trust the market to weed out bad players when the bad players are the ones with enough money to buy public perception and government influence. You have to force them to do the right thing through legislation.

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

#28

Post by FridgeSeal »

fouc wrote: 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?

> if it is "industry standard", does that make it ethical

Nope, not at all. Standard practice does not override ethics. Tobacco companies would consider advertising and promoting smoking as industry practice, but we cracked down down on that because encouraging people to do something that is demonstrably bad for their health was something we decided wasn't ethical and would be cracked down on.

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

#29

Post by mziel »

iagovar wrote: post #23
mziel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can read more about the cookie law here: https://www.cookielaw.org/the-cookie-law/ Basically EU wanted sites to obtain consent to use users' cookies (and for the users to give/take away that consent). However, pretty much all the sites just decided to provide you with a banner saying something like "if you're using this site you agree to our cookie policy". Therefore the law became ineffective and just a nuisance…

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?

Most things in GDPR are not specified in order to both give flexibility to the sites and to reduce the number of loopholes (which are technically legal but against the spirit of the law). You need to decide on the implementation and be ready to defend it in case of an audit.

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

#30

Post by dmix »

allthenews wrote: post #25

You know, I am a pretty staunch supporter of minimalistic restrictions on corporate behavior, putting faith instead in markets. But this seems like the kind of problem I'd consider looking to solve through legislation. Although I should say, not without hesitation, given the extreme discrepancy between rates of change in tech and law. I would hate to see seemingly well meaning legislation passed for something like th…

If you're a supporter of minimal legislation then what's wrong with the courts handling it, as in this case?

A major tech company tracking users across the web beyond their own limited use-case platform is a relatively new phenomenon but now that it's been established in the courts as a big financial and PR risk then there is a big deterrent from future companies doing it. And often courts in other western countries take note of precedence defined in major foreign courts to define their own.

Formalizing this in legislation always seems to sound like a good idea in the short-term. But in practice it's often really hard to define preemptive regulatory systems that work efficiently (and relevant to todays realities), especially in technology, as well as more expensive to enforce via agencies/auditors, and will likely end up wastefully crossing over into many areas/situations which are totally harmless in practice or having negative side-effects which outweigh the benefits, such as harming innovation.

I'd rather we deal with negative behaviour on a case-by-case basis.

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