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

#331

Post by Firadeoclus » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 5:55 PM UTC

TomMarius wrote: post #310

Firadeoclus wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A free market only ideally represents the needs of people if people in fact express their needs. Aggregating user data and using it without consent does not fit that model. There is no obvious reason to believe tracking users "represents the needs of people".

Thanks to data collection and aggregation, the ads are targeted better, and thanks to that, the sites are earning more, and thanks to that, small scale content creation is a viable career. Now that ad revenue will be most definitely cut down to almost zero, a whole sector of small content creators will be destroyed and move to centralized platforms such as Facebook will be encouraged (because only on centralized plat…

What is your reason to believe ad revenue would drop to almost zero?

Revenue might be lower. That is not in itself proof of a worse outcome. Maximising numbers like revenue or GDP is not good per se. Neither is maximising the amount of content created. If you want to know the trade-off is worth it you also have to look at the costs. The impact of tracking on privacy is not zero. The impact of ever more attention grabbing ads is not zero. The impact of persuading us to buy ever more stuff is not zero.

Also, the vast majority of small scale content creators are hobbyists.

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

#332

Post by mtgex » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:02 PM UTC

allthenews wrote: post #73

mtgex wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have lots of restrictions on corporate behavior because markets do not solve human problems, they solve corporate problems. The corporate response to long hours and low pay is to put up suicide nets. In the U.S. we have minimum wage, hourly restrictions, break, and overtime laws. You can't trust the market to weed out bad players when the bad players are the ones with enough money to buy public perception and gove…

You act like corporations are totally divorced from the people that run them. You also ignore how comfortable in-demand white collar work in many industries can be, and non-government movements toward shorter workdays in certain European countries. You also seem to neglect that the government all over frequently takes advantage its position in ways that make things worse for society. The thing about corporations, tho…

I don't feel I've acted like any of the things you're ascribing to me.

Corporations are not divorced from the people that run them, but the people that run them are divorced from the people they impact by their decisions.

Which countries are moving towards shorter workdays without government intervention?

Governments do frequently take advantage of their position. I do not dispute this.

We can prevent a constant churn of negative companies as well as tyrannical states. It's not an either or.

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

#333

Post by Sylos » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #250

Ra1d3n wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its pretty easy: The law says, that you always have to set a willing action to opt in. There can be check-boxes, but they need to be unchecked by default ("privacy by default"). Simple. I have already received multiple communications from Banks and credit card companies, and they are all very explicit about it and it was very easy to see the choices and the effect of the law.

I guess I can't go forward without reiterating the argument, so I guess I'll stop. But, I think considering it easy is naive, considering the mountain of experience to the contrary. Some things are hard to solve with laws.

It's even harder to solve without laws. And it needs solving.

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

#334

Post by s73v3r_ » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:19 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…

Few people already could "enter the market" given the enormous resource requirements to compete with Facebook on it's own. That's not a regulatory thing; that's just a reflection of the reality that these large companies have massive amounts of resources, and similar amounts are needed to effectively compete.

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

#335

Post by Sylos » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:25 PM UTC

obblekk wrote: post #71

It seems like there have been many recent setbacks for FB on the privacy side. When do these setbacks begin to have material impact on the stock price?

I'd be surprised, if it hasn't yet had an impact. As you say, there's been a lot of losses for Facebook recently. I think, we're now up to 4 rulings of Facebook's data use being illegal in the past two weeks.

People considering to buy stock and people owning stock should hopefully be informed enough that noticed this.

There's also the GDPR upcoming in May. I cannot imagine that Facebook won't make losses when that hits. They might be able to defer the impact by mostly ignoring the law until they get sued, but ultimately it really just seems like it's going to be downhill from here on, which is not what anyone looking to buy stock is after.

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

#336

Post by a_imho » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:31 PM UTC

vageli wrote: post #174

a_imho wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO the cookie law was good and (ianal) but a banner in your face is not consent, not in an opt-in way at least.

If you're made aware of the terms and can choose to leave, that's pretty much consent. Do you sign a paper agreeing to all the terms when you enter a car park? Of course not! It's a class of contracts called contracts of adhesion. [0] [0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_form_contract

How is GDPR different in this regard?

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

#337

Post by polskibus » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:47 PM UTC

simion314 wrote: post #244

polskibus wrote: post #102

I suppose US could tax those non-US users so that using fb would cost them something.... Oh wait...

Tax how? FB users do not pay, and this case is for non FB users, will you tax non FB users because they do not use FB? Maybe send the army or CIA to change some governments, some citizens dare not have FB accounts, they must have something to hide /s

I was jokingly referring to recent tariffs announced by US administration, trying to think how a potential retaliatory action from US gov could look like. By the way tax doesnt have to be % only, it can have an absolute minimum too.

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

#338

Post by lovich » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:50 PM UTC

chimeracoder wrote: post #321

lovich wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobbying as a term in the US is pretty synonymous with donating money. If there was a lobbying group that did not donate money you would have to specify that in conversation

> Lobbying as a term in the US is pretty synonymous with donating money. This is flat-out untrue, and repeating this incorrect meme ad nauseum simply makes it harder to address actual problems when they arise. Lobbying is simply the process of petitioning elected officials. It's a necessary part of any functioning democracy, or else there's no fundamental feedback loop connecting elected officials to their constituen…

What you've stated is true by the technical definition of the term, but lobbying in the _common vernacular_ of the United States is synonymous with paying money. You can throw dictionary definitions around all you want but it doesn't change how it's commonly used.

The same issue comes up with the word theory to scientists vs it's meaning in the common vernacular.

As to your second part about corporate entities being prohibited from donating money to campaigns, excuse me while I set up a PAC to donate funds to a senator who is aware that I donate to the PAC and that I would really appreciate it if I got a tax break.

What the law intends != what is actually happening

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

#339

Post by TeMPOraL » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 6:52 PM UTC

Silhouette wrote: post #319

TeMPOraL wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TL;DR: sites were obliged to provide information and ask for consent when using marketing cookies. That is, cookies required for the site to work (e.g. session) were fine, but tracking/analytics were not. Everyone started to show banners saying "we use cookies [OK] [what cookies?]", users just got used to clicking OK on them, and almost nobody has any clue what this was all about. You could see the cookie law as a ge…

I don't know of any case when businesses decided to self-regulate themselves out of potential extra profit Hello. I have moral objections to excessive tracking, and none of my businesses use things like retargeting based on tracking pixels, even though this would almost certainly improve the conversion rates for our online ads significantly. There, now you've seen a case where a business self-regulated out of potenti…

Thanks!

Sad you don't link to your businesses in your profile; now that you made me want to check them out and maybe reward with money.

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

#340

Post by Sylos » Mon, Mar 05, 2018, 7:09 PM UTC

2aa07e2 wrote: post #197

My question is, will I be able to use gmail without my google searches being tracked? Google did a great job to "bundle" its ToS into a single generic agreement for all the services under that "Your Google account" umbrella. I would love to opt out of that agreement, retroactively, and still be able to use gmail.

I would also strongly recommend not using Gmail. Google sifts through your e-mails, which compromises a cornerstone of your digital identity. People needing to send you an e-mail will also seldomly appreciate their e-mail being read by Google.

To answer your question, though, if you live in the EU, then the GDPR, due to be enforced on the 25th of May, does make this practise of Google most definitely illegal. So, in like two years from now, when the lawsuit regarding this concludes and Google is actually forced to follow the law, then you should be able to.

If you still cannot be convinced to drop Gmail, there might be a technical solution to your problem, too.

For Firefox, there's an official extension called Multi-Account Containers, which allows you to have different sets of Cookies in different groups of tabs. And you can tell it to always open certain webpages in certain containers.

So, you would install the extension: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...

Then click the new Multi-Account Container button in the toolbar and from there open a new tab in a Container (you can also create a Container specifically for this, if you want).

Then in this new tab, open up Gmail and log in, and again click the Multi-Account Container button in the toolbar and tick "Always open this website in ...".

Finally, open up a new (non-Container) tab and log out from Google there.