Facebook’s tracking of non-users ruled illegal again in Europe • Hacker News Board

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

#281

Post by emiliobumachar » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 2:55 PM UTC

tobylane wrote: post #188

askvictor wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you do this for services where functionality is reliant on tracking etc? E.g. some of Google's services.

You can only degrade when the users denial exactly relates to the function of the service. I have history turned off in google maps. I can’t name the points I make, it tells me I need to turn history and tracking back on. I hope that becomes an unjustifiable degrade.

I may have understood wrong, but it seems to me that for your maps degrade, the tracking may relate very much to the function of the service. How is the server supposed to remember the name you gave to each point without tracking you? Remember, there are many round-trips to the server when you're scrolling and resizing a map. They could always move point-naming override client side, but that's a pretty big change.

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

#282

Post by snvzz » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 2:57 PM UTC

EggsOnToast wrote: post #42

colmvp wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny. If your site drops dramatically on Google's search results, or if YouTube/Facebook bans your account for reasons, tough luck. They are a corporation and can do whatever they want without resorting to any sort of internal consistency. But heaven forbid governments hold a dominant corporation accountable in the public interest.

>Funny. If your site drops dramatically on Google's search results, or if YouTube/Facebook bans your account for reasons, tough luck. They are a corporation and can do whatever they want without resorting to any sort of internal consistency. That's not really relevant to the parent's observation that Facebook is likely arguing that they're being singled out in an environment where their practices are so rampant as to…

Because Facebook is doing it at scale.

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

#283

Post by kerng » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 2:58 PM UTC

Zhyl wrote: post #252

manmal wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In an ideal world, engineers would be perfectly ethical. But, you know, said hyperbolically, sociopaths can be engineers too. You should not induce from your own values to people in general. Even apart from people without any values.. most engineers don’t hang out on HN, and don’t care much about global scale politics. They care about things that affect them in a very immediate way - family wellbeing, friends, cowork…

Yeah, most people see the world like this: * Turn up to job. Nice people, good desk, good canteen. Benefits good. * Work is interesting - working on cutting edge, dynamic web experiences that are changing the way we interact with people. * Solved a knotty engineering problem today. Was very pleased, boss was impressed. * Shipped product today. New sprint starts tomorrow. No defects! The actual implications of any one…

Your post resonated with me, and it might be the social construct of being part of a large organization that allows these things to happen without any single one individual feeling responsible or in the wrong.

Years ago I remember hearing about the Normalization of Deviance and in many ways that's exactly what we see. Even Facebook's argument of others do the same is in alignment with such normalization. If everyone at jumps in a well, would Facebook to the same?

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

#284

Post by Faark » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 3:07 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #198

seszett wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What about the next Facebook? Maybe there can be no next Facebook (as in, one multinational actor is position of monopoly on one type of service) and maybe that's not a bad thing. If the only way to have the same kind of service from now one is to use a network of separate entities each smaller than Facebook and interoperating between themselves, it might be a good side effect of the law.

If so, that's not a bad result. What I fear is that there is no next FB because fewer people can "enter the market" that in this case is necessarily international .. can't because you need to start with a team of lawyers and compliance officers. FB is unlikely to get injured. They're big and rich and have a deep moat. It would take a lot to shave 5% off its revenue. Making a potential FB competitor restrict itself to…

Yes, such rules would make companies focus on specific local market first and expand slowly. I'm not so sure this is a bad thing. As you said, it doesn't make a difference to existing big companies. Slower growth for new ones could make it more likely we end up with different competitors in different markets (fb west, vk russia, ...) instead a single winner taking it all. And if some potential ideas won't make it cause of slower growth and a some more administrative overhead, I still prefer that over some large foreign evil empire pushing its social norms onto my country.

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

#285

Post by lambdadmitry » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 3:10 PM UTC

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #152

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?!?

What's even worse is that they are effectively shafting everyone using their pixel to track sales through Facebook. If my understanding of GDPR is correct, Facebook's clients are liable under GDPR because they are giving their customers' data away (Facebook is data processor in that case). Facebook maintains 100% radio silence over it, and even if they come up with something tomorrow, it's too late for many to become compliant in time.

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

#286

Post by chimeracoder » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 3:11 PM UTC

eeZah7Ux wrote: post #193

Ftuuky wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. On average, EU and US have about the same corruption, at least according to the Corruption Index 2017 [0] [0] https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_percept...

I wonder if the index treats lobbying and donation millions to support elections as corruption. Such activities are illegal and considered corruption in most countries.

> I wonder if the index treats lobbying and donation millions to support elections as corruption. Such activities are illegal and considered corruption in most countries.

Lobbying has nothing to do with donating money, and lobbying elected representatives is definitely not illegal in most democracies.

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

#287

Post by simion314 » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 3:11 PM UTC

fwdpropaganda wrote: post #276

simion314 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US has many internet and software companies, you have FB, Google, Microsoft, Apple , I can't even name an EU company, I know that SUSE Linux is in Germany so it makes sense that on HN front page you will see this big companies and not some small EU company. As an example in Romania, Microsoft was caught doing illegal things, they corrupted government people to buy tons of licenses, we should not wait for an EU compan…

Again I didn't understand what point you were trying to make. That small companies outside the US don't reach the front page of HN? Of course not. Is that your point?

Yes, and then US HNers complain that they never seen EU punishing the small EU software companies and they only see Apple,Microsoft, Google and FB.

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

#288

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 3:12 PM UTC

tobylane wrote: post #195

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Picking the large foreign company is always an easy target, it can easily lead to protectionism: enforce laws on the outsiders but not the insiders. China is an extreme case of this: foreign companies must walk on egg shells while domestic companies are able to easily break laws now and ask for forgiveness later if the party decides to crackdown.

They are targeting companies from personal data protection-weak jurisdictions who want EU customers. To use your example, US has targeted companies from IP-protection-weak countries. Was it directly targeting China? I'd say not necessarily.

If they are targeting all companies in their jurisdiction, I have no problem with that.

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

#289

Post by mykull » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 3:14 PM UTC

mseebach wrote: post #229

anigbrowl wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Facebook, being huge and hugely invasive, is among those doing the most damage to EU citizen privacy with their collection, so it makes plenty of sense to focus on them.

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

#290

Post by seanmcdirmid » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 3:14 PM UTC

simion314 wrote: post #230

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 withou…

If the law is no cookies or no tracking, then they can literally pick a random internet company within their bidders whose offending. In practice, such broad laws can only be selectively enforced.