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Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

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Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#341

Post by sagarm »

dangrossman wrote: post #174
JacobSeated wrote: post #161

Facebook should just start charging users that don't consent to tracking for targeted advertising. Etc. Problem solved, and we, the shareholders, will hopefully be happy too. It's been truly shit to own Facebook stock the last year.. Let's end this now and get back to writing the growth story. Please.

I doubt that works economically. The money advertisers can pay Facebook is, essentially, a percentage of all consumer spending. A percentage of the money you pay for toilet paper, dish soap, groceries, car insurance, credit cards, etc is funding the advertising budgets of those companies. The money consumers can pay Facebook is, at most, some portion of their discretionary spending budget. What's left over after buyi…

Charmin is likely doing brand advertising, however, and Facebook's ad network will likely still have greater demographic-targeted reach than other options.

If nobody is allowed to build a demographic profile for cross-site cookies, the biggest negative impact will be to small sites. Previously their ad inventory could be relatively high value because it could be assigned targeted ads at scale, without site-specific work or having to trust the site itself. Now the site will at best self-report their user demographics. (1) they probably have poor visibility into their customer demo without something like Google Analytics to guide them and (2) it's difficult for a third party to verify any demographic composition they claim.

Ad targeting on these will likely be content based. I suspect this inventory mostly won't be eligible for lucrative display advertising anymore, if it was before.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#342

Post by jimnotgym »

halestock wrote: post #178
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…

> No regulator has had the idea of just going to Facebook, having a real conversation about what they're doing, then talked about it with ethics professionals and researchers and tried to draft a forward-looking law that will make the whole system better? This would never work because Facebook is uninterested in making "the whole system better". Their entire goal is to make money off of user data, and they have zero…

If you have a complaint against you under GDPR the first thing that happens is the authority in question contacts you and suggests how you could clear up the problem. It is only through refusing to comply that you get fined

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#343

Post by matkoniecz »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #332
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

In terms of quantities of data collected this likely undersells US efforts. In terms of nefarious use it perhaps oversells the issue… at least so far. But calling it a conspiracy is disingenuous when the potential is clearly there, and OP's comparison was clearly about the quantity of data collected.

Also, the claim made was about capabilities, not about nefarious use.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#344

Post by matkoniecz »

Hnrobert42 wrote: post #254
fncivivue7 wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyperbole requires intent and exaggeration, can you point out either? I'm not seeing it. It's also 100% on topic. You not liking the discussion doesn't change that.

You believe the US intel operation is comparable to the Stasi?

In term of capabilities? Yes.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#345

Post by matkoniecz »

justapassenger wrote: post #324
cronix wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies did just fine selling products with non-personalized targeted ads that were intended for a wider audience before there was an internet. None of this tracking is actually needed in order to sell ads or make a profit.

People also were able to communicate before there was an internet. None of this internet is needed to allow people to communicate. Personalized ads are as big of a breakthrough for the ads industry as internet is for people's communication. Both also come with legit downsides, but saying it's not needed is naive, at best.

Ads with tracking are not needed for us, even if beneficial for ad industry.

And personalization based on where ad is being displayed is not a problem in general.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#346

Post by TheCoelacanth »

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…

Good riddance. If the EU wants to outlaw that business model, then that's their prerogative. I wish the jurisdiction I lived in would do the same and more.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#347

Post by TheCoelacanth »

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…

Facebook didn't have a leg to stand on. Their justification was utterly ridiculous. The only insane thing is that they made it this long.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#348

Post by deely3 »

hnlmorg wrote: post #190
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…

> Meanwhile, Facebook has invested billions of dollars in building and developing a platform according to their fair reading of that law. So often in the last 20 years I’ve seen companies (and particularly US tech companies, but it’s not exclusive to them) deliberately read more charitable interpretation of the law, knowing they'll make millions over and above any fines they might receive. It’s so common place that t…

> Facebook has invested billions of..

..of dollars that Facebook recieve by selling info about their users?

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#349

Post by KarlKemp »

gmueckl wrote: post #207
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…

Your point is stronger than you probably think: there are entire countries where ad-supported smartphone apps are the only really viable way of communicating for the majority of people because things like normal phone calls or text messages are ridiculously expensive for the locals. The business of financing communications through ads is actually helping millions of people in these affected poorer countries. That's j…

“No free lunch” comes to mind. That phone and Internet access get paid in some way.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#350

Post by mrjin »

hedora wrote: post #59

Cool. So, how does this impact consumers that never used Facebook, but that have shadow profiles for social network inference and ad tracking? Presumably, since Facebook has no way to contact those people, they will just shut down the no-logged-in-but-tracked half of their business in Europe? (If you don't know what I mean by shadow profile: When you first create a Facebook account, it helpfully produces a prepopulat…

Even if you dont't use Facebook at all, you can still be tracked by Facebook as lots of website you visit may contain trackers from it.

So the plain fact is you get tracked by Facebook even if you are not a Facebook user. The info collected by those trackers might not be enough to identify you, but still good enough to feed tailored ads to you.

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