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WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

reuters.com

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Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#321

Post by trishume »

DannyBee wrote: post #179
qubex wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you mad? Miss out on a market of 740+ million of the world's richest consumers, twice the size of the US, the bulk of the western world and most of the developed economies on the planet?? No, that's absolutely not going to happen. Additionally, they'd never risk withdrawing from a market and letting a local competitor develop, take hold, expand, and attack them on home turf. Look at social networks and search eng…

"EDIT: I see you are fairly highly placed in Google. I'm quite surprised if you genuinely think what you wrote, given the raw numbers you must surely know, but given your legal training, I am not at all surprised that you would posture as if you were unaware of this." Character assassination, awesome! Please leave the company i work for this out of this, always. I never speak for my company on hacker news unless i sa…

I'm just here to say I love your HN comments and that your contributions are really appreciated, you're one of my favourite commenters. I even subscribe to your comments on RSS (along with other commenters) so I don't miss any.

Haters are disproportionately represented in replies.

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#322

Post by MVorlm »

germanier wrote: post #316
hartator wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have an organization in EU, they can't sue you in the U.S. because it's allowed here. It's like the U.S. trying to sue local Amsterdam pot shop because they sell drugs to U.S. residents.

I have bad news for you: things like the Uniform Foreign Money Judgments Recognition Act exist which makes it possible to enforce foreign verdicts. Even if no such law applies, most US companies that do business with EU customers have by definition some assets in the EU even if only briefly (or else they couldn't charge them anything). The US doesn't sue foreign pot shops because the sale happens abroad and they have…

That's the point. If I run a US-based company and have 0 assets in X country, it doesn't matter. EU lawyers would also know this and also wouldn't bring it to court. It's just a waste of everyone's time. I'm certainly not going to do anything If I get a summons from a random country due to some random law. Especially if it means nothing in the country I'm currently located in.

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#323

Post by darklajid »

juanmirocks wrote: post #209
tomcooks wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dunno about Germany but in most Europe i lived cashless. Maybe I am misunderstanding your line about living with only a credit card.

No. You are not misunderstanding me. You are right that there are several European countries with a well spread normalization of using credit cards. In the European countries that I've spent most of my life, and which are also some of the biggest ones (Germany, France, Spain) have still IMO a poor acceptance of credit cards. -- In contrast, for example, in London you can pretty much live without cash whatsoever.

You can go without cash for a lot on Germany. Train tickets, groceries, cinema, restaurants, bars.. All of those and more work fine without cash (you need Maestro, but everyone has one of those).

It fails if you want to buy food in the streets maybe, not every Doner can be paid by card.

But.. that's normal and aligns with what I see here in Singapore now: Cashless, unless small food shop/hawker place or something similar.

Germany doesn't accept _credit cards_ on a large scale. It does support paying with a card made of plastic usually..

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#324

Post by kodablah »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #320
kodablah wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the point that the GP post is making [...] Yup, that was the point. > And that's their decision Some at least. It's modern European federalism. The same people that the lawmakers believe aren't able to make their own decisions about which services are good or bad for them are, yet, able to determine that these regulations will be beneficial.

> The same people that the lawmakers believe aren't able to make their own decisions about which services are good or bad for them are, yet, able to determine that these regulations will be beneficial. That's a valid argument in a perfectly transparent world with even negotiating power. But companies are opaque or change their handling of data (that one is the basis of this story!) and there's a race to the bottom wh…

Even negotiating power would be a valid argument in a perfectly regulated world. But governments, often with good intentions, improperly or overly regulate many times only stifling us small guys and often not even knowing it (it's hard to quantify).

> And these regulations are a very minor impingement on free contract-making

Agreed, but it's a question of cost vs benefit. They may not be a minor impingement on smaller companies and consumer choice and may make minimal impact anyways. I think we can all see that, if the law is evenly applied, smaller companies stand to lose most. Granted, the EU tends to subjectively choose when to bring the hammer down and it's mostly on larger companies. But it's still not worth the risk.

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#325

Post by toomuchtodo »

MVorlm wrote: post #322
germanier wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have bad news for you: things like the Uniform Foreign Money Judgments Recognition Act exist which makes it possible to enforce foreign verdicts. Even if no such law applies, most US companies that do business with EU customers have by definition some assets in the EU even if only briefly (or else they couldn't charge them anything). The US doesn't sue foreign pot shops because the sale happens abroad and they have…

That's the point. If I run a US-based company and have 0 assets in X country, it doesn't matter. EU lawyers would also know this and also wouldn't bring it to court. It's just a waste of everyone's time. I'm certainly not going to do anything If I get a summons from a random country due to some random law. Especially if it means nothing in the country I'm currently located in.

And you have no plans to have assets or employees in the EU. Ever.

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#326

Post by JumpCrisscross »

stevenwoo wrote: post #186
kabes wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of privacy protection has been thrown overboard in the name of the fight against terrorism here in the EU.

We've given all that up in the USA with the Patriot Act, though it sounds like the NSA stopped collecting everything in the last couple of years, it's trivial to get a court order to enable it for any individual. The pretension of the FISA court is transparent. https://www.npr.org/2013/06/13/191226106/fisa-court-appears-...

French security laws make the PATRIOT Act look like a toy.

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#327

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Jdam wrote: post #151
RestlessMind wrote: post #99

EU is one of my best hopes when it comes to privacy and really wish they start going after tech behemoths. I have given up on US authorities doing anything to reign them in. And policies in other significant countries (eg. China) would be even worse for user privacy.

This is just protectionism at its finest. You better don’t think that would happen if FB was a french company. The industrial-governmental-complex is stronger in France than anywhere else in the western world.

> if FB was a french company

Let’s be honest, Facebook would have never had a chance as a French company.

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#328

Post by vidarh »

theptip wrote: post #125
endisukaj wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much they can do against tech behemoths based in the US though. They can stop them from gathering EU citizen data, or at least approve laws that try to stop them but who knows what is really happening behind the scenes.

As the article says, under GDPR (coming in mid-2018) they will be able to fine 4% of global revenue, or 20m EUR, whichever is larger [1]. I'm not certain that this particular case is covered by the GDPR, but if it is, then that will compel action. If Facebook declines to pay these fines, then presumably their execs would be arrested if they ever travelled anywhere in the EU. While FB can claim that it “is only subjec…

Or any of their assets or revenue in EU may end up getting seized.

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#329

Post by paulie_a »

gradys wrote: post #134
RestlessMind wrote: post #99

EU is one of my best hopes when it comes to privacy and really wish they start going after tech behemoths. I have given up on US authorities doing anything to reign them in. And policies in other significant countries (eg. China) would be even worse for user privacy.

I'm torn on this. On the one hand, I agree, the EU legislates privacy to a degree that no other political entity does as far as I'm aware, but on the other hand, they often do so with poorly designed policies. As an example, I'd point to the cookie notices that appear on almost every major website, which must have absorbed, globally, many careers worth of man-hours to implement while offering virtually no real-world…

I've never understood that cookie notification, there is no "I agree" so I be simply hit the popup modals x and then the back button, or sometimes if the site is particularly terrible about it. I click an ad or two

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#330

Post by vidarh »

DannyBee wrote: post #146
theptip wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the article says, under GDPR (coming in mid-2018) they will be able to fine 4% of global revenue, or 20m EUR, whichever is larger [1]. I'm not certain that this particular case is covered by the GDPR, but if it is, then that will compel action. If Facebook declines to pay these fines, then presumably their execs would be arrested if they ever travelled anywhere in the EU. While FB can claim that it “is only subjec…

Or you'll see FB/others decide the EU isn't worth it over time. It's interesting how many people here believe that there is no other possibility other than "we get what we want to happen". Your faith is, IMHO, misplaced. There are many cases in history where other companies decided it wasn't worth the cost of doing business in certain countries. Or they just successfully coopted the governments!

If Facebook decides the EU isn't worth its time, it leaves the door wide open for competitors to use the EU as a springboard, the way Chinese companies are doing in China. It's a very dangerous situation for them even if you ignore the vast lost market opportunities.
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