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Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

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Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#211

Post by jstummbillig »

abofh wrote: post #182
jstummbillig wrote: post #170

I feel there is a risk in having the cost of privacy getting transferred to the user that we have yet to actually confront, and it worries me that we are not doing that. I am not exactly breaking the news: If companies make less money through ads, they have to make it "some other way" (which so far has resolved in "making the user pay directly"). A lot of people have been suggesting that it's not their business to fi…

I think you make an interesting strawman, but look in the reverse direction. If companies put the same revenue figure per customer as a pricetag, and then offered a discount of 100% to opt out, would it work? Have two pennies if you can answer that without a presumptive bias.

That's simple enough: I don't know. But I get the a vague feeling you are being rhetoric and you think you do? If that's the case, please, just offer up the answer alongside your thoughts leading up to it.

Also I don't think I made a strawman (of any quality) but it's somewhat telling you think I did. To be super lame: I have very conflicted feelings about this topic and no conclusive opinion.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#212

Post by CountSessine »

RubyRidgeRandy wrote: post #196
halestock wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No regulator has had the idea of just going to Facebook, having a real conversation about what they're doing, then talked about it with ethics professionals and researchers and tried to draft a forward-looking law that will make the whole system better? This would never work because Facebook is uninterested in making "the whole system better". Their entire goal is to make money off of user data, and they have zero…

on the contrary, I think facebook and google have a huge incentive to work with different governing bodies to define what data is ok to collect and build identifiers around, and what is not. There is no way facebook would just throw up it's hands and say "we have no incentive to find a way to advertise to a population of 750 million people."

Yes - especially if they can do this in a way that still makes them money but is expensive and burdensome to comply with. That would keep them in the game but seal the market off to potential competitors.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#213

Post by babypuncher »

coder543 wrote: post #99
gbil wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to check the retina remark as my Sony Z5 premium came in mind with the 800+ppi but even before that in 2013 I had z Sony Z1 with 440ppi and I'm pretty sure other manufacturers had high dpi screens since 2010 eg. sharp's ISO3 . So "miles ahead" is not true plus I believe iphones had other manufacturing tricks that helped in the "retina" marketing hype, I believe touch/display elements been closer together etc. N…

Why are you comparing phones from 2015 and 2013 to Apple marketing from 2010? The competition absolutely did catch up eventually. And if the Sharp ISO3 is the best example you can come up with from 2010, then I disagree with your claim entirely. A single, low volume halo device is not comparable to a mainstream device that sold in the millions. The 2010 Galaxy S had a 233 PPI display compared to the 326 PPI that Appl…

I remember getting my iPhone 4 and just sitting there on the couch staring at the home screen for a good 20 minutes, in awe of just how sharp the image was.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#214

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

johndhi wrote: post #162

This is a crazy way of making laws, IMO. To recap: a law was put in place 5 years ago that said if you get consent you can basically use data in any way, with some very vague and general language about how consent can be gathered and what it means. Meanwhile, Facebook has invested billions of dollars in building and developing a platform according to their fair reading of that law. Then, some random guy says he doesn…

GDPR requires consent for a specified usage of people's data. If you want to send people emails, then you need emailing consent. If you want to use people's data to target advertising, then you need to ask them for that consent.

https://gdpr.eu/gdpr-consent-requirements/

I'm doubtful that Facebook have been using a fair interpretation of the laws as that doesn't seem to be the way they operate. I'm also doubtful that users can easily revoke consent which is another requirement under GDPR.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#215

Post by newaccount74 »

johndhi wrote: post #162

This is a crazy way of making laws, IMO. To recap: a law was put in place 5 years ago that said if you get consent you can basically use data in any way, with some very vague and general language about how consent can be gathered and what it means. Meanwhile, Facebook has invested billions of dollars in building and developing a platform according to their fair reading of that law. Then, some random guy says he doesn…

> Facebook has invested billions of dollars in building and developing a platform according to their fair reading of that law

This is utter bullshit. They have tried to twist and bend the rules and tried to use an exception that doesn't apply to them at all. Everybody knew that Facebook went against the spirit of the law.

Somehow they got the Irish authority to go along with their idiotic interpretation of the law, but that doesn't mean they were working "according to a fair reading of the law", it just means that the Irish authority failed to do their job.

If Facebook had gone with a conservative reading of the law, like many other companies have, they would have added consent prompts 5 years ago, and they wouldn't have a problem today.

I would suggest you spend some time reading the GDPR. It's surprisingly approachable. The parts about consent really aren't that hard to understand at all, and it's clear what the intention of the exceptions were (eg. a pizza delivery service obviously does not need to ask for consent to share the customer address with a delivery driver for the purpose of delivering the pizza, but they do need to ask for consent if they want to add the address to a direct mailing directory).

It's unfortunate that it took the EU 5 years to do something about this obvious violation, but the problem is not the law itself.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#216

Post by gameman144 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #190
johndhi wrote: post #162

This is a crazy way of making laws, IMO. To recap: a law was put in place 5 years ago that said if you get consent you can basically use data in any way, with some very vague and general language about how consent can be gathered and what it means. Meanwhile, Facebook has invested billions of dollars in building and developing a platform according to their fair reading of that law. Then, some random guy says he doesn…

> Meanwhile, Facebook has invested billions of dollars in building and developing a platform according to their fair reading of that law. So often in the last 20 years I’ve seen companies (and particularly US tech companies, but it’s not exclusive to them) deliberately read more charitable interpretation of the law, knowing they'll make millions over and above any fines they might receive. It’s so common place that t…

It's definitely hard to say that big corporations are victims, but I know that I personally find lots of bog standard legalese hard to interpret. Granted, lawyers have a lot more experience there, and more employed gives lots more perspective.

At the end of the day, they are still human, and laws and regulations are still written by humans, meaning that it can often be hard to suss out intent from the letter of the law.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#217

Post by aplummer »

cronix wrote: post #183
jstummbillig wrote: post #170

I feel there is a risk in having the cost of privacy getting transferred to the user that we have yet to actually confront, and it worries me that we are not doing that. I am not exactly breaking the news: If companies make less money through ads, they have to make it "some other way" (which so far has resolved in "making the user pay directly"). A lot of people have been suggesting that it's not their business to fi…

Companies did just fine selling products with non-personalized targeted ads that were intended for a wider audience before there was an internet. None of this tracking is actually needed in order to sell ads or make a profit.

Economic expansion is felt a lot worse in the opposite direction though. I buy products targeted with advertising to me all the time.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#218

Post by mxkopy »

JacobSeated wrote: post #161

Facebook should just start charging users that don't consent to tracking for targeted advertising. Etc. Problem solved, and we, the shareholders, will hopefully be happy too. It's been truly shit to own Facebook stock the last year.. Let's end this now and get back to writing the growth story. Please.

Imagine writing something like this unironically and not immediately wanting to die of embarrassment

Excuse me, 'growth story'? For Facebook ??

Time proves the shareholders vs. rest of society stereotype to be true, I guess

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#219

Post by LelouBil »

kaapipo wrote: post #58

Well, active consent has been seen before with cookie banners. Let's see how long it takes before every time you open Instagram you get a prompt like: "I allow not not omitting the usage of tracking"

Cookie banners that make refusing harder than accepting are not GDPR compliant I think.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#220

Post by occamrazor »

abofh wrote: post #182
jstummbillig wrote: post #170

I feel there is a risk in having the cost of privacy getting transferred to the user that we have yet to actually confront, and it worries me that we are not doing that. I am not exactly breaking the news: If companies make less money through ads, they have to make it "some other way" (which so far has resolved in "making the user pay directly"). A lot of people have been suggesting that it's not their business to fi…

I think you make an interesting strawman, but look in the reverse direction. If companies put the same revenue figure per customer as a pricetag, and then offered a discount of 100% to opt out, would it work? Have two pennies if you can answer that without a presumptive bias.

There is an adverse selection problem: the users who would pay are probably the richer -and most profitable- ones. The only equilibrium is a very high price to opt out, far above the average revenue per user, and essentially nobody would pay for it.

Insurance has similar problems since a long time: search for Stiglitz and “unraveling“ for literature on the topic.

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