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Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

bbc.com

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Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#281

Post by mynewtb »

adventured wrote: post #259
jhall1468 wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen this so many times, but if this future comes I think there will be a lot of angry ass people complaining about the $100s of dollars it costs to make the internet useful.

Every recipe site runs on ads as one example. Now five million recipes across 1,000 prominent sites are to be locked behind paywalls, and you must pay $5 per month for access to each site due to the extreme drop in traffic they suffer (nobody is signing up to pay except at the largest sites, smaller sites have to charge more to make up for that, they implode accordingly). The result: 973 of those sites disappear. Div…

What do you think the creative work is for running a recipe site? And what about the technical work/costs?

I guess you mean the kind where either there are users providing those for free or it uses a huge number of compiled one, not some person inventing new ones.

I would wager that 970 of those sites can be run for virtually no cost, either maintained by loyal community or the wide internet.

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#282

Post by csomar »

And here I'm hoping for the EU GDPR to kick all of these guys in the balls pretty hard. In the last few hours, I have been getting dozens of emails. Basically: Take it or leave. Some of them sent an email "if you don't leave, you are taking it".

And you are not given a choice to download your data or temporarily access your account to sort out things. Your hands are getting forced to accept the rules or potentially be locked out of your account.

I'm taking note of these little evil services. And in all fairness, my banking provider actually gave two options: one is required and the other is optional (marketing data collection). I was able to unselect it successfully.

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#283

Post by VMG »

madez wrote: post #160
VMG wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget to scrub the headers! Your software stack might store something as well.

You are legally responsible for whatever your computer systems do, and you've always been.

The age of unlicensed computing is coming to an end.

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#284

Post by iainmerrick »

lloydsparkes wrote: post #98
sveme wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren‘t the ToS pulled from the web when you set it up with a google account? I doubt you‘re agreeing to two year old ToS.

Even if the ToS are pulled from the web, it might just pull the document, not the UI, providing opt-outs, etc

They could replace it with a document saying “There are no conditions of use. Enjoy your new phone!”

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#285

Post by throwupaway123 »

ipsum2 wrote: post #258
bad_user wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lawyers can say such things and I'm sure that Facebook will try to fight it, but I don't think they'll be able to do so successfully, because the GDPR is very specific about what a "legitimate interest" is. See here for an explanation: https://www.gdpreu.org/the-regulation/key-concepts/legitimat... PS: the EU can't wait to give fat fines to companies like Facebook and Google, due to their tax evasion schemes. It's th…

> EU can't wait to give fat fines to companies like Facebook and Google, due to their tax evasion schemes. How does GDPR relate to "tax evasion" at all? Also, Google and FB set up to pay taxes in Ireland, which is a member of the E.U. That seems legal to me. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement

New companies can't benefit from that scheme anymore, since 2014 actually.

"Finance Minister Michael Noonan closed the Double Irish to new schemes in October 2014 (existing schemes to close in 2020), and expanded the Capital Allowances for Intangibles scheme as a replacement"

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#286

Post by mynewtb »

heartbreak wrote: post #179
scrollaway wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://gsuite.google.com/ A lot of people don't seem to know that GSuite is both usable (useful, even) and affordable (cheap!) even if you are a solo user. Here's a quick howto: 1. Go buy your own domain name (~$10/yr, https://www.gandi.net/ ). Make it something you like, something professional. This is for your personal email address. firstname@lastname is the most common pattern. I recommend everybody do this. Eve…

> This becomes an email address you truly own, and your email provider cannot hold you hostage anymore. It's hardly yours. Using a custom domain for anything sensitive like banking is not a good idea. Your registrar is almost certainly a lot easier to phish/social engineer/whatever than Google.

a) 2FA for your bank account

b) Who is going through all the trouble to target me specifically with a phishing attempt.

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#287

Post by iainmerrick »

dmortin wrote: post #95
henrikschroder wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sign me up! The sad truth though is that the users who are most likely to pay to get rid of ads, are also the users that are most valuable to advertisers, because that's a signal they have more money to spend than the rest.

What if they say it's $20 a month? And it's just facebook. Google also asks for $20, Reddit too, etc. It won't be cheap.

That model already works for streaming TV! At least it’s working pretty well for Netflix, Amazon, HBO... (It’s definitely not ideal for viewers, but at least now it’s easy to get TV without ads.)

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#288

Post by moopling »

dmortin wrote: post #58
ckastner wrote: post #6

> "The GDPR explicitly allows any data processing that is strictly necessary for the service - but using the data additionally for advertisement or to sell it on needs the users' free opt-in consent" This is the key point. As the saying goes, on Facebook, you aren't the customer, you are the product. The GDPR just changed this -- rightfully, in my opinion.

Somebody has to pay for it in the end, so Facebook could simply say "agree to targeted advertising and use the site for free or do not agree and pay a monthly fee for the site".

I didn't think that was possible. Otherwise it would make determination of a fair price very messy -> In the extreme facebook could set an arbitraily high price if they didn't want to change their business model.

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#289

Post by csomar »

narrator wrote: post #9

I am trying to think what the secondary consequences of GDPR are going to be. If any user can see their data on any service than any government can quickly plug-in to access all user data on any service. This is like NSA Prism for everything. If a user can export their data easily from any service, they can easily resell their own data for money to services that seek to monetize that data. They could even rent out th…

> If a user can export their data easily from any service, they can easily resell their own data for money to services that seek to monetize that data. They could even rent out their data by the day for model training using the right to delete.

This has been tried infinitely. It doesn't work. Say your service can extract $5/year/user from advertisers. At 25million users, you can pull a $125m revenue. That's huge. But if users were to sell their data, it'd only give $2-3 if you take commissions into questions.

As people realize that their data does not bring much cash, and the invasiveness of the procedure (will you agree to share your weekly grocery purchases for one year with 202 advertiser, and you get paid $2?).

Most people will disagree as they realize how a horrible on an equation it is. Only bots and kids with no disposable income will remain.

Re: Google and Facebook accused of breaking GDPR laws

#290

Post by Aunche »

ericst wrote: post #274
mrep wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is naive at best. To me, it's like the EU is a spoiled child who wants everything for free without paying for it. Most of the web is payed for by targeted advertising and getting rid of that would make the web suck as their would be way less money to actually pay for content. Also, non-targeted ads suck as they usually end up being like Viagra ads since they pay the most.

I don't see what is naive. The EU has never said that you can't have ads. You can do ads without using and selling user data. For instance, you can have contextual ads (depending on what you read, not who you are) or just random ads. GDPR is not against the ad business, it is only setting limits and obligations on how you can use personal data. It is saying that it is not normal for businesses to build huge user prof…

> GDPR is not against the ad business

Yet somehow, I doubt that GDPR would exist if Google and Facebook were German companies, rather than American ones.

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