Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe • Hacker News Board

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#311

Post by matheusmoreira » Fri, Dec 09, 2022, 8:36 PM UTC

jstummbillig wrote: post #170

I feel there is a risk in having the cost of privacy getting transferred to the user that we have yet to actually confront, and it worries me that we are not doing that. I am not exactly breaking the news: If companies make less money through ads, they have to make it "some other way" (which so far has resolved in "making the user pay directly"). A lot of people have been suggesting that it's not their business to fi…

> That's fine up to the point where zealousness effectively worsens the life of others, and maybe even more than that, our collective lives.

Funny. Facebook's addictive "engagement engineering" was proven to worsen people's mental health in significant and measurable ways. When is that going to stop being fine? When are all the ad tech attention brokers gonna be held accountable?

If advertising-driven social media is wiped off the face of this earth, our lives are going to improve, not the other way around. We don't need advertising, nor do we need social media.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#312

Post by abofh » Fri, Dec 09, 2022, 8:41 PM UTC

jstummbillig wrote: post #211

abofh wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you make an interesting strawman, but look in the reverse direction. If companies put the same revenue figure per customer as a pricetag, and then offered a discount of 100% to opt out, would it work? Have two pennies if you can answer that without a presumptive bias.

That's simple enough: I don't know. But I get the a vague feeling you are being rhetoric and you think you do? If that's the case, please, just offer up the answer alongside your thoughts leading up to it. Also I don't think I made a strawman (of any quality) but it's somewhat telling you think I did. To be super lame: I have very conflicted feelings about this topic and no conclusive opinion.

Occam hits the nail on the head - those with valuable data will pay, the value of "privacy" is not a long tail graph, it's a diminishing return.

So the products for the poor are subsidized by the information of the able at a cost to everyone. That doesn't feel sustainable to me - we're barely twenty years into the Google era, and how many hours have been wasted opting out of tracking? How many useful things could have been created for a dollar per user instead of mesothelioma ads?

That the indigent get 'free' service is a byproduct of the fact that companies abuse everyone else to subsidize it.

"Your" data may be worth a buck, but to the right person, targeting "you" is worth a fortune - the value you extract from your Gmail address is the same, the value they extract is not.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#313

Post by zelphirkalt » Fri, Dec 09, 2022, 8:43 PM UTC

johndhi wrote: post #162

This is a crazy way of making laws, IMO. To recap: a law was put in place 5 years ago that said if you get consent you can basically use data in any way, with some very vague and general language about how consent can be gathered and what it means. Meanwhile, Facebook has invested billions of dollars in building and developing a platform according to their fair reading of that law. Then, some random guy says he doesn…

How about not rolling with ones own interpretation of the law, which coincidentally is very convenient for oneself?

I mean, if they do not actually know for sure how a specific law is to be interpreted then better err on the side of caution, instead of becoming a criminal, violating the rights of many millions of people. Better take precautions in case ones convenient interpretation turns out to be BS. I am sure they made their business viable without all those violations of the law. They can just flip a switch now, and stop doing the bad thing, that they now know for sure is illegal :)

But hey, that is just what I personally would consider an ethical approach, ha! Maybe not caring about the law and just continuing to ignore people's rights, being as invasive as possible to people's privacy, for as long as it is financially viable is the more ethical choice ...

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#314

Post by jstummbillig » Fri, Dec 09, 2022, 8:43 PM UTC

matheusmoreira wrote: post #311

jstummbillig wrote: post #170

I feel there is a risk in having the cost of privacy getting transferred to the user that we have yet to actually confront, and it worries me that we are not doing that. I am not exactly breaking the news: If companies make less money through ads, they have to make it "some other way" (which so far has resolved in "making the user pay directly"). A lot of people have been suggesting that it's not their business to fi…

> That's fine up to the point where zealousness effectively worsens the life of others, and maybe even more than that, our collective lives. Funny. Facebook's addictive "engagement engineering" was proven to worsen people's mental health in significant and measurable ways. When is that going to stop being fine? When are all the ad tech attention brokers gonna be held accountable? If advertising-driven social media is…

> When is that going to stop being fine?

I don't think it was ever fine. I also don't think it pertains to my comment.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#315

Post by wpietri » Fri, Dec 09, 2022, 8:46 PM UTC

BlueTemplar wrote: post #300

wpietri wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think you mean 2010s, with the release of Avatar in 2009 ? I in fact don't. The wave starts earlier. > 3D now being an option in cinemas everywhere It's an option that not many people pick. Even before the pandemic, 3D ticket sales were declining: https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=... And it has rebounded less well than 2D: https://www.statista.com/statistics/259987/global-box-office...…

Wasn't Avatar 1 also available in 2D ? When 3D was NOT an amenity ? Anyway, yeah, arguably even color wasn't "transformational" (sound probably was ?) But then 3D films and TVs are pretty much offtopic anyway - unlike VR/AR compared to 2D (or even 3D) monitors, they don't radically change the mode of interaction compared to 2D films and TV... (not to say that VR/AR will be successful)

3D films are relevant in that they are an example where something that was technically better was not transformational. And where there was a lot of hype but it turned out that people didn't really care. Which is important, because Meta is betting tens to hundreds of billions that facehugger VR will be transformational.

If you go back to the Brewster stereoscope, I count 6 waves of people expecting that stereoscopic 3D would change the world. Each time, there was lots of investment and lots of hype. Each time, it turned out that people were fine mentally reconstructing 3D from 2D without stereoscopic assistance.

My point here is that Meta's efforts could well be failed wave number 7.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#316

Post by matheusmoreira » Fri, Dec 09, 2022, 8:46 PM UTC

jstummbillig wrote: post #314

matheusmoreira wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's fine up to the point where zealousness effectively worsens the life of others, and maybe even more than that, our collective lives. Funny. Facebook's addictive "engagement engineering" was proven to worsen people's mental health in significant and measurable ways. When is that going to stop being fine? When are all the ad tech attention brokers gonna be held accountable? If advertising-driven social media is…

> When is that going to stop being fine? I don't think it was ever fine. I also don't think it pertains to my comment.

It has everything to do with your comment. Your point is that regulating this stuff could harm people. My point is they're harming people a lot more just by existing and it would be a net gain if they were regulated out of existence.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#317

Post by zelphirkalt » Fri, Dec 09, 2022, 8:46 PM UTC

denton-scratch wrote: post #247

gameman144 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's definitely hard to say that big corporations are victims , but I know that I personally find lots of bog standard legalese hard to interpret. Granted, lawyers have a lot more experience there, and more employed gives lots more perspective. At the end of the day, they are still human, and laws and regulations are still written by humans, meaning that it can often be hard to suss out intent from the letter of the…

> standard legalese hard to interpret Indeed. We should know what the law is, without first hiring a team of lawyers. There's a trend to make laws that are harder and harder for ordinary people to understand. Partly that's a result of having to cut out exceptions and loopholes for lobbyists and donors; but I suspect it's largely because lawmakers are increasingly trained, practising lawyers. If the language you speak…

Parts I read of GDPR were more approachable than any of the EULAs I have seen. More approachable than software licenses as well.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#318

Post by Zak » Fri, Dec 09, 2022, 8:47 PM UTC

Macha wrote: post #234

johndhi wrote: post #162

This is a crazy way of making laws, IMO. To recap: a law was put in place 5 years ago that said if you get consent you can basically use data in any way, with some very vague and general language about how consent can be gathered and what it means. Meanwhile, Facebook has invested billions of dollars in building and developing a platform according to their fair reading of that law. Then, some random guy says he doesn…

> To recap: a law was put in place 5 years ago that said if you get consent you can basically use data in any way, with some very vague and general language about how consent can be gathered and what it means. The "vague and general language": Article 7, paragraph 4: > When assessing whether consent is freely given, utmost account shall be taken of whether, inter alia, the performance of a contract, including the pro…

I am not a lawyer, a GDPR implementation specialist, or even a GDPR enthusiast and I knew this.

Specifically, my understanding has always been that a company cannot demand consent to data storage and processing in exchange for providing a service except where the data is actually necessary to provide the service. It certainly isn't necessary to track what users do on other websites in order to provide Facebook's core product. It isn't even necessary to do that to provide ads targeted to a Facebook user's interests because people who use Facebook normally provide significant information about their interests through normal use of Facebook.

There is no way that Facebook wasn't aware courts were likely to understand the law that way.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#319

Post by pyrale » Fri, Dec 09, 2022, 8:52 PM UTC

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #253

dangrossman wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds fairly accurate to me. This is what killed the US-EU Privacy Shield program, twice. That was the government's attempt at creating a way for US companies like Facebook to legally process data of EU citizens under GDPR. It's been struck down by the EU courts, due to our federal government's spy powers and the CLOUD Act, that invalidate any claims US companies make about protecting personal data in their posse…

I was referring to comparing the US intel operation to the Stasi.

Yeah, it really cheapens the effort the US has put in their surveillance network to compare it with the chumps at Stasi writing some stuff down on paper...

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#320

Post by ckastner » Fri, Dec 09, 2022, 8:54 PM UTC

johndhi wrote: post #162

This is a crazy way of making laws, IMO. To recap: a law was put in place 5 years ago that said if you get consent you can basically use data in any way, with some very vague and general language about how consent can be gathered and what it means. Meanwhile, Facebook has invested billions of dollars in building and developing a platform according to their fair reading of that law. Then, some random guy says he doesn…

> To recap: a law was put in place 5 years ago that said if you get consent you can basically use data in any way, with some very vague and general language about how consent can be gathered and what it means.

What?

Article 7 par 4. GDPR [1], "Conditions for consent": When assessing whether consent is freely given, utmost account shall be taken of whether, inter alia, the performance of a contract, including the provision of a service, is conditional on consent to the processing of personal data that is not necessary for the performance of that contract. (emphasis mine)

Personalizing ads is not necessary for providing the service, hence the forced consent is not given freely.

To anyone involved with the GDPR back then, this was as clear as the day.

Also, Article 7 par 3. clearly states that even if consent were given freely, the "data subject shall have the right to withdraw his or her consent at any time", and "[p]rior to giving consent, the data subject shall be informed thereof. It shall be as easy to withdraw as to give consent.", which was clearly not on the table with Facebook.

[1] https://gdpr.eu/article-7-how-to-get-consent-to-collect-pers...