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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

#221
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What other monetization schemes? Noone is going to pay for access to a page with funny pictures, the site will cease to exist. Everything else will be behind a paywall and you call that an improvement? Up to this point in time, everyone had access to news, videos, science articles etc - for free. Those who didn't like being tracked had numerous options to avoid it. They also had the option to stop using these trackin…

>Up to this point in time, everyone had access to news, videos, science articles etc - for free. I really don't like your definition of 'free'. wikipedia has been relying on donations for quite some time. guardian.co.uk is one of the recent examples asking for donations and working out for them. > science articles Ok that has to be a joke, the paywall journals subscriptions are nothing like ads. Please, don't conflat…

You overgeneralize. There are many sites with normal ads than don't disturb the users much. And again - no user experience (on a non-existent site) is better than degraded user experience? Why don't you just stop visiting the site when it doesn't matter to you if the site ceases to exist and let us others do what we want to do?

> breaking the law

No one is breaking the law yet. The law has been changed, and has been changed in a way that destroys businesses and people.

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

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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." "But, officer, everybody else was speeding, too!"

To be pedantic, I can attest that in California drivers ed they teach you that it's safest to keep with the flow of traffic. The difficulty is in proving that traffic was going as fast as you.

Is this rule above the other rules like speed limits, stooping at red light ? It seems to me that this kind of fuzzy rules can undermine the others.

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

#223
post #194
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I've said before, ultimately we have to pick one: - single Internet jurisdiction, overriding national sovereignty; in practice this means letting America run the Internet - National Internet jurisdictions, which potentially come with some sort of virtual border policing; Great Firewall(s) - lawlessness, which libertarians will like but produces outcomes increasingly unacceptable to the public

If we put things into a historic context, then national internet jurisdiction is what will happen.

Westphalian Wide Web?

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

#224
post #13
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…

I think this is an odd defence to follow if indeed this is a defence. It's as if a convicted criminal demands to overturn the conviction because some other (alleged) criminals haven't been on trial yet.

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

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How to tell Facebook that I don't want to be tracked? By not having a fucking Facebook account! it seems to me that's actually the crux of that court decision.

A typical scenario: Your friends and acquaintances have your contact info stored on their mobile phones. Your phone number, an email address or two, maybe a photo and a birth-date so they don't forget to wish you happy birthday. They install Facebook/WhatsApp/Twitter, etc, all of which upload your personal data from the phones to their own servers without your knowledge or consent. It's more complicated than deciding…

Complicated? Remove this “feature” to start:

>all of which upload your personal data from the phones to their own servers without your knowledge or consent.

Our default legal position shouldn’t be one of accommodating a corporation’s existing market-acquisition practices over people’s privacy.

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

#226
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Defend it? What happened with "innocent until proven guilty"?

This isn't a criminal case.

Most of European constitutions don't limit this principle to criminal cases - actually most of the time it specifically says that it especially applies to interaction with government on top of criminal cases.

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

#227
post #165

Two kind of related points. The jurisdiction stuff is disturbing. Having separate rules/rulings for Belgium, Turkey, Venezuela, etc... It's (a) not practical and will end up helping incumbents .(b) It really curbs the internet's ability to promote an open information norm. Privacy is an issue and we need to do something about it. But, I have a real feeling cencorship, corporate-protectionism, copyright and other agen…

As I've said before, ultimately we have to pick one: - single Internet jurisdiction, overriding national sovereignty; in practice this means letting America run the Internet - National Internet jurisdictions, which potentially come with some sort of virtual border policing; Great Firewall(s) - lawlessness, which libertarians will like but produces outcomes increasingly unacceptable to the public

Lawlessness also produces some good things, that people like. Most people are not fuundamentalists, so idk if libertarians looking for theoretical purity are all that relevant (especially here in europe).

One of the things lawlessness produced was internationalization and de-censorship of media. That hasn't been without cost, we've had several (mostly failed, but still) political revolutions as a consequence, from Cairo to Hong Kong. At the heart of it was the ungovernability. Countries had to deal with a more or less "take-it-or-leave-it" proposition. China was the first to really break out of that restriction, and I don't think it's a coincidence that (a) a powerful country led the charge or that (b) political cencorship was the leading reason.

Another benefit (again, in my view) was a relatively open playing field, commercially. We're worried about power concentrating in the few hands fo FB, Google, and such. But, the internet economy is still a lot higher resolution than most other markets. The big markets are usually highly concentrated (eg, supermarkets, FMCGs, financial services, media, logistics, transport...) or practically confined to small scale niches: local services, real estate...

I think we've been getting cynical about this as the winners dig in, but the internet really has been a place where part time tinkerers could compete with $bn mammoths.

This is not an anarchist statement, or part of an overarching political ideology. There are, as you say, tradeoffs. There are choices that can create more or less good or bad.

Anyway, lets not count chickens just yet. We've seen China regulate the internet effectively for political control and industry protectionism. We've yet to see any country be effective on privacy. We've got the GDPR playing out this year. We've got a more active courts & legislatures. Lets see if privacy actually improves.

The worst case scenario is that we end upp with all the negative trade-offs, but all we end up with is a privacy bureaucracy that doesn't affect privacy much.

remember that we've seen one (IMO) embarrassing failure go unacknowledged: the cookie law. We got nag screens and compliance audits. We didn't get any privacy.

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

#228

What is Facebook's end game here, I don't get it. GDPR is around the corner, it certainly won't fly under GDPR so why the jurisdiction argument even, the days for tracking people without consent is numbered - a rational organization would realize this. I would think just say ok we stop doing it because we're going to have to stop doing it anyway. But they're not stopping, what is the plan?!?

a sale or merger of the company. maybe a company like MSFT or Google would buy it, along with all the data. just think of the integration opportunities!

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

#229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not typically how things usually work. When a government agency (think IRS or FAA) decides on a specific interpretation of a law, rule or regulation, they don’t go after a random guy to prosecute. They publish an opinion, a guideline, or interpretation and a compliance deadline. The industry is given a choice to comply or present an alternative interpretation (through courts, lobbyists or legislative represent…

Europe hews to somewhat different legal and administrative philosophies from the US, and I don't think the EU is any more corrupt than the US, arguably less so. This subject is discussed very well in a favorite little book, Adversarial Legalism by Robert Kagan.

I don't think corruption is the worry so much here, it's the erosion of the rule of law when regulators and courts are seen to bask in the popularity of enforcing the law against certain high-profile targets, especially when the perception is that this target has been particularly zealously pursued, instead of dryly and boringly applying the law equally to everybody without passion.

That erosion is not corruption on its own, but can lead to it.

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

#230
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nobody likes to be made an example of. However, regulators like to make examples of bigger corporations since the publicity is more effective with them, and also they are able to both pay up and/or change.

Fair application of regulations is essential to rule of law. Going after one company for a common practice but not others is simply the more tyrannical rule by law.

But is in this case an EU institution selecting FB or a civil rights organization selecting the biggest offender? If the citizens complain about FB and going after justice why are you asking the citizens to find first other smaller and non US company that maybe did much less damage and start with them. Citizens should have the right to demand justice for illegal behavior of US company that makes business in EU without having the other camp calling protectionism.

It is like the Microsoft anti competition case would not take place until we find some small non US OS vendor to punish first so the Americans won't get upset.

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