Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

noyb.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 443 posts

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#211

Post by Nextgrid »

wccrawford wrote: post #169
britneybitch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think their point wasn't the regulations, but the unpredictability of those regulations. It's hard to start a business if you're worried the rug will be pulled out from under you at some point in the future.

The GDPR is only unpredictable if your business model is at best in a grey area with regards to it. The spirit of the law is actually very clear, and should your business model be compatible with it, you will be fine.

It isn't Europe's fault that the tech industry's only business model for the past decade has been about misusing personal data in ways people didn't expect or consent to (otherwise GDPR would not be a problem again since people will willingly opt-in).

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#212

Post by mpweiher »

whimsicalism wrote: post #137
wintermutestwin wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a "free" service in exchange for extremely invasive spying and psychological manipulation /agreed Trading trinkets to the natives for land is the most apt analogy I can think of. In a capitalist society, we should be able to set the price for something that we own. My data is worth way more than the cost to provide the trivial services that Facebook, Gmail, etc provide.

If you think that the price is not worth it, you are free to refuse the transaction. The EU govt here is requiring the counterparty to provide you with the service even if you refuse the transaction.

Nope, Facebook is free not to provide those services.

They just aren't allowed to provide them by spying on you.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#213

Post by technofiend »

whimsicalism wrote: post #6

[flagged]

>Europe that keeps them from being a hotbed of technological innovation [...] across a wide swath of sectors including healthcare and tech.

In some cases it's OK and frankly preferable to prevent "technological innovation" that comes from the US. I recently signed up with a new healthcare provider that wanted me to use their portal, but buried in the signup agreement was text that said you agree that if your data is shared with a third party from this portal it no longer enjoys HIPAA protection and may be used for any purpose. Yeah, fuck that.

I consider healthcare information highly sensitive and see zero upside to handing off any hope of privacy so some middleman can make a couple of bucks reselling my data. That specific kind of "technological innovation" needs to be legislated away - if my data enjoys HIPAA protection it needs to be tainted such that it may never leave the HIPAA ecosystem, and no one should be able to gatekeep my access to healthcare by insisting I give up my right to privacy.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#214

Post by dylan604 »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #177
dylan604 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if that has EVER stopped them before

The difference is that now they're getting fined and being given legally-binding orders to stop.

It's not like they haven't been fined before, and continued doing shady shit. I'm sorry, but I have such a low opinion of Meta/Facebook/theZuck that none of this means anything positive to me. I am a much more pessimistic person regarding these kinds of things that I give no credence of benefit of doubt. I also don't trust these legally-binding orders as they are only legally binding until some sharp tongue lawyer figures a way to weasel out from under them.

I'm happy for you that you are much more optimistic about these things, and I hope for all our sake you are not disappointed. From point of view, I can only be pleasantly surprised. To disappoint me at this point would be an ultimate new low.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#215

Post by andsoitis »

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.

There's really a parallel issue, which is private vs. public interests (companies vs. government / the people).

You see it play out with European companies too, where they exploit populations where either there's lack of regulation or where they can bribe the officials. Profit, see what you can get away with. That's just on the legal front (like this case), not the moral or ethical front.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#216

Post by charcircuit »

Nextgrid wrote: post #203
ben_w wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

>advertising platforms can effectively defraud their advertisers by serving their ads to people who have no interest in them

Why would a platform ever do this intentionally? This will just result in lower CPM and advertisers pulling out.

>which would be impossible in a world where people explicitly choose which types/categories of ads they're interested in.

It's possible. You can still make an ad model to give people the worst ads and ignore their preferences.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#217

Post by jdiez17 »

astrange wrote: post #188
jdiez17 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This decision, as I understand it, renders large swathes of tech service revenue models untenable. To be honest, good riddance. If it is no longer possible to offer users a "free" service in exchange for extremely invasive spying and psychological manipulation (without explicit consent [0]), it forces companies to 1) innovate in order to offer such services for a sustainable price, and 2) encourages competition fro…

I agree that if anytime anyone came up with a business model you banned it, that would produce more innovation in business models. But you also wouldn’t get any of the products because you’ve banned all of them. So it seems like a bad way to run an economic bloc. The EU in particular doesn’t even know what they’re doing and none of their poorly drafted “blue is green now because I said so” laws even work. You just ge…

Cookie banners are only necessary when using cookies that are not technically necessary, i.e. for spying.

Also, most cookie banners are designed to nag you into clicking "yes, track me". Refusing the tracking is often more difficult than accepting it, which is illegal.

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#218

Post by from »

pxeger1 wrote: post #34
Nextgrid wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They could press criminal charges against all Meta executives and extradite them from the US. Of course this is ridiculous and will never happen for a number of reasons, but it shows that the EU doesn't have literally no teeth.

America requires dual criminality for extradition. America has no privacy law similar to GDPR so that couldn't happen + I think GDPR violations are a civil thing only (?).

Re: Meta prohibited from using personal data for advertisement

#220

Post by LelouBil »

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.

I'm happy to be an EU citizen for all the great tech regulations that are actually passing here !
Post reply on HN