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Facebook now denying access unless EU users opt-in to tracking

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Re: Facebook now denying access unless EU users opt-in to tracking

#251

Post by rock_hard »

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #208
cabaalis wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American here; I just don't quite understand the premise. "Here is what you are giving us, and here is what you're getting in return" seems perfectly legit to me. If this interpretation of the law is correct, then the government is essentially saying the "in return" portion has to be eliminated. Which seems to be against the idea of trade.

One of the points of the GDPR is that you cannot make usage of your service contingent on giving up your privacy, unless your service very specifically requires the user to give up personal details in order to it to even function. Strava is a good example, it does not work without GPS position, otherwise it cannot track your bike routes. But Facebook does not require tracking to work. It does not require you to give…

I disagree what FB would work fine if you gave it no data or fake data!

The whole point of FB is for people to exchange data about themselves with their friends and family! If people don’t share any data or just fake data FB doesn’t work.

For them to offer their service they also have to make money, so they run ads to do that. And to make the ads useful to people they need data for targeting!

And now they allow users to either agree to this deal or download their data, delete Facebook and do whatever they want.

Simple as that

Re: Facebook now denying access unless EU users opt-in to tracking

#252

Post by crankylinuxuser »

kazinator wrote: post #150
crankylinuxuser wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your account has been suspended for the foreseeable future for breaking the terms of service. No we will not tell you what you did. You already know what you did. Our automated systems found your policy violation and acted appropriately. They are beyond your comprehension or refutation. You may not talk to a person regarding your dismissal. It is against policy to discuss active or closed issues. You have no recourse…

> They are beyond your comprehension or refutation. Where by "your" we mean "one's", i.e. effectively "our".

I was writing the first part as a US company would say to a user.

"Your" in that context was from the company to the user they wronged.

Re: Facebook now denying access unless EU users opt-in to tracking

#253

Post by icebraining »

jasonlotito wrote: post #16
floatingatoll wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then you’d be permitted to do so. Facebook Messenger’s chat with your friends service does not depend on tracking, for example, so this argument doesn’t apply to Facebook.

Define "doesn't depend on" because I could easily make the argument that Messenger's chat does require tracking location for example to increase security and to fight spam. By not opting in to tracking of location, you degrading the quality of the service and affecting other people. i.e. Without this tracking, the quality of Messenger is affected, and therefore, by definition, the service cannot be provided without i…

That's fine, but then FB can only use that location for increasing security and fighting spam. Slurping information based on an excuse and then using it for something else is explicitly prohibited by the GDPR.

Re: Facebook now denying access unless EU users opt-in to tracking

#254

Post by jkaplowitz »

BlackDeath3 wrote: post #206
jkaplowitz wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, they're allowed to withdraw from the market, or decouple the privacy-invasive bits and find a way to make that work financially when users don't opt in to those. Nobody's forcing them to serve Europe if they insist on being this awful regarding mandatory tracking. They're free to allow space for a competitor to grow with a different attitude toward privacy.

Right, I'm not talking about withdrawing from the market, I'm talking about remaining in the market and being allowed, as a private company providing a private service, to freely associate. I have no qualms with a competitor starting up to serve those denied by Facebook, but let's not muddy the water by equivocating a monopoly as a result of anti-competitive practices with one that forms simply because nobody wants t…

Restrictions on how private parties can provide a private service are ubiquitous in every market. In the US, home-cooked meal startups get shut down because their uninspected kitchen doesn't meet commercial standards. In Ethiopia, you need a local entity with an IT license (seriously) to import a Dell server that you've already purchased. In Canada, you can't agree to an employment contract that allows for zero-notice zero-compensation firing when you didn't do something extreme like steal. Etc.

I don't think most of the people who find Facebook convenient for coordinating groups actually choose the tracking knowingly and willingly (at best begrudgingly), nor do they choose to exclude the people who object more proactively to those things even when that's the effect.

Society's legislative and regulatory choices have a valid role to fix negative externalities of what economic actors would otherwise naturally do. Natural monopolies/oligopolies like electric companies, highway operators, and Facebook are all worth regulating for roughly the same reasons - even according to Orthodox free-market undergraduate microeconomics 101.

Re: Facebook now denying access unless EU users opt-in to tracking

#255

Post by apexalpha »

xxpor wrote: post #236
EastSmith wrote: post #121

It is clear that FB does not plan to be GDPR compliant [1] https://medium.com/@bozhobg/facebook-doesnt-plan-to-be-gdpr-...

The maximum penalty is 4% of WW revenue, right? What happens if FB just decides to pay that in perpetuity?

Then after 25 cases they'd be bankrupt for the year.

Re: Facebook now denying access unless EU users opt-in to tracking

#256

Post by rahoulb »

purple-again wrote: post #87
ClassAndBurn wrote: post #42

GDPR doesn't cover enough of the population using Facebook to warrant such a change to their business model where you can use the service without them using your data. They believe they are entrenched enough to just require this (and likely are for many EU residents).

I'm really curious to find out if the GDPR privacy stance (I'm American, not well traveled, and with no non american social circle) is like the 'no JavaScript' community. Vastly over represented in the tech community and not really representative of the population as a whole. In other words, are 99% of European citizens going to just click through what ever annoying prompts they have to in order to get to their faceb…

In business circles there appears to be widespread panic about GDPR.

Amongst "ordinary" people, there is a growing sense of unease about data collection - reflected in the "Facebook must be listening to my phone because they overheard a conversation I was having and now I'm seeing ads for it".

I believe people are starting to understand the implications of data collection and are quite unhappy about it.

Re: Facebook now denying access unless EU users opt-in to tracking

#257

Post by tedunangst »

Angostura wrote: post #246
tedunangst wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So many people or so many people in the web service tech industry that frequents HN?

To give you an idea, I work at a school. Every member of teaching staff all of admin, site-services and IT have had GDPR training. Getting consent for photos, for school trips, referral to outside agencies is a substantial issue, as is leaving student records on desks, keeping files with PII on encrypted sticks etc. This is a school.

That's interesting. So now a student can come back and demand you delete their permission slip for a field trip?

Re: Facebook now denying access unless EU users opt-in to tracking

#258

Post by KozmoNau7 »

cabaalis wrote: post #240
KozmoNau7 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the points of the GDPR is that you cannot make usage of your service contingent on giving up your privacy, unless your service very specifically requires the user to give up personal details in order to it to even function. Strava is a good example, it does not work without GPS position, otherwise it cannot track your bike routes. But Facebook does not require tracking to work. It does not require you to give…

Thank you for the clarification. That makes sense, although I'm not 100% sure I agree that it doesn't need the information to function. It could be de-identified for the individual, sure. But to actually use the service you need to connect with others, whose identities you must know something about. By following pages or celebrities or whatever you indicate that you are interested in their subject material. So in ord…

Yes, but clicking "like" on a celebrity's FB page is not personally identifiable information. You cannot use to it discover the person's identity.

To connect to other users on a service, I don't need to know any personal details about them, only their chosen username, which can be completely random and have no relation to their identity.

Re: Facebook now denying access unless EU users opt-in to tracking

#259

Post by newscracker »

Tehnix wrote: post #178

I'm actually much more interested in what Google collects about me. At least for me, it's somewhat transparent that Facebook tries to slurp up all they can, but it's much less clear with Google, that seems to try to downplay that they are in fact also, heavily reliant on your data. Does anyone know if Google has made any statements on this?

If you'd like to see what Google has about you, you can visit https://www.google.com/settings/takeout (or search for "Google Takeout"). Google has maintained and updated its own solution to export data it has collected from you, the user.

While I do trust Google more than I trust Facebook, I also actively avoid giving information to Google (through various practices).

Re: Facebook now denying access unless EU users opt-in to tracking

#260

Post by icebraining »

tedunangst wrote: post #241
icebraining wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if the personal data is necessary to provide the service. And "my business model makes it necessary" doesn't cut it. Otherwise you need consent, but you can't DoS if it's denied. EDIT: removed wrong link.

> but you can't DoS if it's denied. What does that mean? Why did you link to your parent comment?

> What does that mean?

It means you can't deny service if the consent is not granted by the user.

> Why did you link to your parent comment?

Because in it I try to explain why donatj's theory that FB can simply deny service if people don't consent seems incorrect to me.

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