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

Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 506 posts

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#261

Post by 8note »

zdragnar wrote: post #91
tstrimple wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we never see examples of small teams disrupting large markets with entrenched competitors. I'm afraid with taxi medallion regulations, we'll never see any competition in that space.

They wouldn't have, had they actually obeyed the same laws and regulations. Instead, they offered a nearly identical service (arranged via app rather than hailing streetside) and skirted around all of the regulations that had kept the incumbents entrenched for so long.

Yes, and? This agrees with the statement that small companies are fluid and can find ways to work with regulations. Coming up with ways to avoid is that.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#262

Post by bonoboTP »

hugi wrote: post #146
erhk wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The information necessary to do that is stored, could be used for other things in the future by that company, could be stolen, could be subpoena'd. It's also taken without explicit consent or explanation of what is recorded. Bullets are just pieces of metal and gunpowder, why are you afraid of them?

Note that they also don't just sell "ads", they sell psychological manipulation. Yes, product ad targeting is one type of manipulation but where the real danger lies is when they target us with ideology. It's an expressely evil system.

Where does ideology stop? In some sense all the ads blend into one meta-ad, an implicit one, that teaches us what to value in life. I mean something of the same nature which used to be the "picket fence suburb house, 2 kids and a dog", but is something else today.

Slavoj Zizek (controversial I know) has good observations about this, that ideology is precisely the whole framing, which is invisible from the inside. You don't notice it as something "sold to you", it's deeper than that, it's something that informs what you should strive for.

Ideas like "if only you could afford XYZ, things would become so much more $positive_adjective". But not explicitly. Through implication, stories, association. That you need to work more, build a career, buy better things, or become free, express your inner authentic self through self-expression using this and that brand, this and that political slogan etc.

I anticipate that this is already too much of a cliche for some people, while for others it's just a strange way to look at things...

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#263

Post by nomel »

Traster wrote: post #111
stickfigure wrote: post #11

This is the balkanization of the internet. We've lived through a brief period of free exchange among peoples, but it's soon over. I predict only one viable future for all technology companies, big and small: Pick a single national jurisdiction, keep your employees and servers inside it.

This is absolutely not what's happening here though. Facebook absolutely could keep the data within the EU, they just think it's more profitable to move UK user data to California. Now, it's a valid question as to why the UK would allow their constituents most personal data to be transferred out of their jurisdiction, but that's up to the UK government. Facebook exists in hundreds of jurisdictions, it's not rare for…

> why the UK would allow their constituents most personal data to be transferred out of their jurisdiction

Are there limitations with using products/doing business outside the UK, from within the UK? As in, is there any authority that they could use to stop people from, willingly(?), using a foreign internet service? It seems that would require some pretty draconian internet policies.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#264

Post by [deleted] »

8note wrote: post #186
dheera wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it be possible to store data in a cryptographically decentralized way to stop giving meaning to "where" a data is stored? Or maybe even just XOR it with a random key, put the result in the UK and put the key in the US. That way neither US nor UK has "personal data" -- independently each country just got a pile of white noise -- but the two countries together do have it, and they wouldn't be able to say who "rea…

The government can just hold the locals in prison until the decrypted data is provided

[deleted]

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#265

Post by waheoo »

ricardo81 wrote: post #248
cortesoft wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would you have been able to get people to see your great unique website 20 years ago? I don't remember it being easy to get a large audience at any point in the internet's history.

You build a site with unique content, decent layout, design. Email other website owners "Hi, I think this would be would be a decent resource for your 'other resources' page / your visitors might like this". (as opposed to ... what other means do you discover new content?) Only, no one does link pages anymore, because they're fearful of platform algos deciding that their inbound/outbound link profile is toxic. What I…

Linking liberally to a wide range of domains is seen as a net positive in SEO.

SEO isn't as complicated as anyone makes it out to be. It's really simple.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#266

Post by lmm »

cortesoft wrote: post #236
ricardo81 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's easier to put things online wrt technical barrier of entry and cost, but it's a lot harder for things to get seen. Got a popular page on Facebook? pay for it to be seen. Got a great unique website? Pay to be seen via Adwords. Website owners don't link so liberally as they once did because the link graph has been obliterated by "what people think will please Google" rather than linking to things they think other…

How would you have been able to get people to see your great unique website 20 years ago? I don't remember it being easy to get a large audience at any point in the internet's history.

You could join a webring, or link to related people and ask them to link back. Given that there was no financial incentive to get traffic (if anything the opposite), there weren't so many pages with duplicate content (or no actual content at all) competing for attention.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#267

Post by rsync »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #23

Free exchange among peoples is alive and well. It is easier today to make a website and share anything than it has ever been in the history of civilization. All this is is the reining in of a few greedy corporations that offer information-sharing platforms in exchange for exploitation. New communities will pop up, and old ones resurface.

"Free exchange among peoples is alive and well. It is easier today to make a website and share anything than it has ever been in the history of civilization."

This has always been my own reaction to pronouncements that the Internet as we knew it is dead, or over.

I'm usually quite optimistic about our ability to freely (and usually without monetary cost) create and share, globally.

However, the closure of Nekochan (an old fashioned web forum dedicated to SGI hardware and the IRIX OS) has changed my mind a little bit. The owner of that site became convinced that it was literally impossible to run a forum website and maintain GDPR compliance. He believed that it introduced infinite liability and would require constant purging of data based on requests that could come at any time into the infinite future.

I'm paraphrasing, of course, and I was not actively using the site when it shut down, but it was one of my favorite spots online and a source of priceless information and richness.

And now it's gone ...

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#268

Post by ricardo81 »

waheoo wrote: post #265
ricardo81 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You build a site with unique content, decent layout, design. Email other website owners "Hi, I think this would be would be a decent resource for your 'other resources' page / your visitors might like this". (as opposed to ... what other means do you discover new content?) Only, no one does link pages anymore, because they're fearful of platform algos deciding that their inbound/outbound link profile is toxic. What I…

Linking liberally to a wide range of domains is seen as a net positive in SEO. SEO isn't as complicated as anyone makes it out to be. It's really simple.

Not sure where you're coming from wrt SEO. Get 100 SEOs in a room together and you get 100 different opinions.

But when it comes to linking, people generally link out less. I can't source anything right now, but the information is available, perhaps through Majestic that shows that over time, people are more shy about linking out to the wider web, anecdotally, from fear of being penalised for doing so.

The threat of having a bad outlink meaning your inbound organic search traffic disappears means people err on the side of caution.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#269

Post by bonoboTP »

avianlyric wrote: post #238
bonoboTP wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if they start freely sharing data on UK citizens to others in the Five Eyes alliance. How will you know?

Another Snowden? Change in government? Does it really matter? Point is I help elect the UK government, that means I can change it. Does not apply to the US government, so the US government could put full page ads in the Daily Mail talking about how the abuse the data of UK citizens, and there's diddly squat I could do about it.

How do you know which party will do what, once in government? You wait for another Snowden and replace them again? What if your preferred nice politician enters power and is briefed on things that make him realize there are more upsides to the project to combat national security issues, and secretly continues things?

It's very hard to have popular control over secret operations where you may only sporadically learn about things via whistleblowers once in a while. It's quite different from visible policies like banning or legalizing gay marriage, abortion, raising or lowering taxes or the minimum wage etc.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#270

Post by animal_spirits »

Sargos wrote: post #246
alisonkisk wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would an ungoverned corporation be less evil than one subject to democratic laws?

Facebook is not subject to democratic laws as they ignore most of them and only follow certain ones from a small group of about a dozen countries. A decentralized organization is governed by the public which is more democratic than other systems that exist today.

Are there good cases of Facebook ignoring democratic laws? I've never really heard of Facebook doing anything that isn't in violation of laws (United States laws at least, I cant say other countries). For the U.S. the laws just aren't there yet to put the right restrictions on Facebook
Post reply on HN