Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement • Hacker News Board

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#201

Post by okayman123 » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 5:20 PM UTC

britneybitch wrote: post #17

whimsicalism wrote: post #6

[flagged]

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.

Aggregate all the harms ever suffered by everyone in all of history from all kinds of ad tracking, and the total harm will be less than a single child laboring a single day on a single thing.

Besides, the EU isn’t like, banning clothing imports, which have all sorts of EU illegal stuff in their supply chains, because those are EU businesses.

Obviously people agree in principle that there are socially bad business models. I don’t think child labor and ad tracking are remotely comparable. Where do you draw the line? The honest answer is, whatever you get stylized-outraged about, because you have limited intellectual bandwidth and your job isn’t to figure shit out like this.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#202

Post by throw10920 » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 5:21 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #123

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…

Legislation is used in cases where individuals either can't make that choice or if individuals' choices would cause negative externalities for some people. That's how we get food safety laws, employment laws, waste disposal laws, etc. With regards to food safety for example, the vast majority of people don't have the equipment nor knowledge to be able to test whether the food they just bought isn't contaminated, so i…

> That's how we get food safety laws

Yes, and we also have food labeling laws that require companies to truthfully warn consumers about some mildly-unhealthy things (sugar, trans fats) on the nutrition facts label - but, crucially, these laws do not ban those things.

That's the argument being made - that companies should be able to run on business models that aren't extremely bad (putting yourself into slavery, physical harm) as long as they clearly communicate to consumers exactly what they're doing (which, to be clear, is not happening now - a 30-page privacy policy in legalese with lots of "mays" is nowhere close to the "privacy nutrition label" that we deserve).

> The same can apply for data protection - very few people have the skills and resources to reverse-engineer every single binary they run and inspect network traffic, so it's better if significant penalties just force all companies to not misuse personal data by default.

That's a crazy invalid argument. The fact that very few people can reverse-engineer binaries doesn't actually matter. The government also isn't going to reverse-engineer every binary in existence, nor do they test every single product that is sold for banned substances, because that's not the way that (e.g. food safety) laws work.

The way that food safety laws actually work is that the government says "here are the rules for labelling, and here are a list of things that absolutely cannot go into your product at all" and then may occasionally test for compliance. That's exactly how both (a) labelling (but allowing) and (b) banning sale/(mis)use of personal information would work.

Your (invalid) argument has nothing to do with the argument about whether it's better for companies to not do thing x vs do thing x but clearly warn customers about it, because the enforcement/detection mechanism is exactly the same, whereas you're (falsely) implying that it somehow differs.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#203

Post by Nextgrid » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 5:21 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #178

charcircuit wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it's pretty clear that "the market" isn't solving this problem. Have you considered that it isn't being solved because consumers don't actually mind the extra tracking? All the tracking does is attempt to give them better ads. Better ads provide a better user experience. Personalized ads are a win win for both the company and the user.

Mostly people don't know, and literally can't imagine, how much data there is about them. I accidentally freaked out a friend when they posted a photo on FB and challenged their friends to guess where it was taken, by responding 30 minutes later with a link to the Google street view photo of the same spot. That said: The personalisation of the adverts is, at least in my case, pretty terrible — FB and Twitter categori…

> The personalisation of the adverts is, at least in my case, pretty terrible — FB and Twitter categorised me as being interested in sports I've never watched, languages I've not learned, and politics of countries I've never lived in.

Part of the reason for the push for opaquely-personalised ads could also be because advertising platforms can effectively defraud their advertisers by serving their ads to people who have no interest in them, which would be impossible in a world where people explicitly choose which types/categories of ads they're interested in.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#204

Post by whimsicalism » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 5:22 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #195

whimsicalism wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://mises.org/wire/poor-us-are-richer-middle-class-much-... Here's one analysis, but there are others. I would prefer a less conservative source.

That's not an analysis, that's a polemic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mises_Institute Even if they got the numbers right, which I doubt, they completely miss that US income has to pay for a lot more than in most of Europe, healthcare and education just as the most prominent examples, also lack of public transit etc. And of course anyone who has ever lived both in the US and in one or more European countries knows t…

if you read the article, you would see that they account for social service transfers.

> And of course anyone who has ever lived both in the US and in one or more European countries knows that this "analysis" is BS.

mm. if we are going by anecdata, my dad grew up in Europe in latter 20th century and they could not afford shoes or electricity. his siblings were put up for adoption. things have certainly changed, but that is intense material deprivation relative to latter 20th century US.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#205

Post by astrange » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 5:23 PM UTC

benlivengood wrote: post #104

Nextgrid wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

A government regulation can’t work to prevent another government regulation. Especially not in a parliamentary system that can change its own constitution.

(Or just ignore its constitution like China does.)

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#206

Post by _Algernon_ » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 5:24 PM UTC

Nextgrid wrote: post #7

samwillis wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Them "leaving", as in having no legal/corporate presence in, the EU wouldn't remove obligations under GDPR. They would have to block all access from EU citizens to do that.

In practice they will get away with it because good luck enforcing those penalties on a company without any assets you can reach.

1. Force Apple and Google to remove the apps from stores.

2. Lowest effort DNS blocker to exclude the 90% who don't care enough to circumvent.

2. Let the lack of network effects and time do the rest.

Sure, a few will hold on, and there will probably be a temporary "buy a phone with fb installed for 10000$" market, but given time, Facebook/Whatsapp/etc. will be dead in Europe.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#207

Post by mpweiher » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 5:25 PM UTC

OliverGilan wrote: post #132

ThunderSizzle wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because someone has more material items than you doesn't mean your life is worse or that you are poor. Poverty isn't about how little you have to others - its about being able to provide and sustain yourself and your family in society. As far as I understand it, poverty is much less now than 100 years ago.

Don’t know why this is being downvoted when it’s objectively true. Parent says wealth inequality is less in Europe therefore being “poor” is more desirable which makes no sense. The US could have higher inequality but that could just mean the richest are richer and the poor have the same standard of living. It could mean the poor are poorer in the US and the richest are even. It could mean the poor AND the rich are r…

Your analysis is wrong. Wealth inequality by itself is a problem, even if absolute levels are higher. This has been shown in study after study.

This obviously doesn't mean that any wealth inequality dominates any absolute level (quick: everyone gets nothing!), and getting the balance right is tricky.

But looking at the world happiness index, it is obvious that European countries are doing a pretty good job.

https://dmerharyana.org/world-happiness-index/

    1 Finland 7.842 7.809 5,554,960
    2 Denmark 7.62 7.646 5,834,950
    3 Switzerland 7.571 7.56 8,773,637
    4 Iceland 7.554 7.504 345,393
    5 Netherlands 7.464 7.449 17,211,447
    6 Norway 7.392 7.488 5,511,370
    7 Sweden 7.363 7.353 10,218,971
    8 Luxembourg 7.324 7.238 642,371
    9 New Zealand 7.277 7.3 4,898,203
   10 Austria 7.268 7.294 9,066,710
   11 Australia 7.183 7.223 26,068,792
   12 Israel 7.157 7.129 8,922,892
   13 Germany 7.155 7.076 83,883,596
   14 Canada 7.103 7.232 38,388,419
   15 Ireland 7.085 7.129 5,020,199
   16 Costa Rica 7.069 7.121 5,182,354
   17 United Kingdom 7.064 7.165 68,497,907
   18 Czech Republic 6.965 6.911 10,736,784
   19 United States 6.951 6.94 334,805,269
   20 Belgium 6.834 6.864 11,668,278
   21 France 6.69 6.664 65,584,518

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#208

Post by whimsicalism » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 5:25 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #197

whimsicalism wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's see how people would vote/poll on the option of having fewer material items & goods. Generally I find this rhetoric is popular when people are making decisions for other people rather than those people articulating their desires.

Wrong. For example, I voted with my feet. I used to live in the US, but I moved (back) to Germany, because despite the fact that I could make tons more in the Bay Area, my standard of living is much higher here.

The thing about votes is that they express the opinion of more than a single person.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#209

Post by dcgudeman » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 5:25 PM UTC

no_time wrote: post #179

As an EU citizen all I can say is: Get fucked. I hope the EU grows a spine and actually doubles down instead of bowing to US pressure. >Fine for Meta more than tenfold from € 28 million to € 390 million. Third case on WhatsApp pending. Starting to get into a range for the fine that makes sense. Give it another tenfold increase and I'm content.

[flagged]

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#210

Post by Zak » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 5:26 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #6

[flagged]

This is not an instance of regulation being unpredictable.

A plain reading of the GDPR makes it pretty clear that it is illegal to require consent to data processing for targeted advertising as a condition of using a service. I'm not a lawyer or a GDPR expert, and I knew this.

There is zero chance Facebook didn't know that was both the intent of the law and how courts were ultimately likely to interpret it. They decided it would be profitable to interpret the law in an unreasonable, but semi-plausible way that allowed them to increase their profits. Of course they hope they can convince the courts to accept that interpretation permanently, and I'm sure they've weighed the probability of that against the amount they're likely to be fined.