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Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

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Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#351

Post by indymike »

IfOnlyYouKnew wrote: post #264
indymike wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This is civil law, not criminal. Presumption of innocence doesn’t apply. If the court is so sure that the plaintiff will prevail, why even have a trial? The answer is that until the court rules, barring 100% certainty of the plaintiff prevailing, you have to wait for the court's deliberation or you have only oppression and no justice at all. Both sides must have a chance to make their case.

In civil law, the roles of plaintiff and defendant are largely interchangeable. If you order food and don't like it, the restaurant might sue you for payment. Or you need to sue the restaurant if you already paid. It's rather arbitrary, being only based on the order of the exchange of food and money. In any case, take it up the law, because it is as I said: the burden of proof is different, its "preponderance of the…

You are talking punish first, then have a trial later. Regardless of the rules of evidence, or who is suing who, the reason we have courts and trials is to allow both sides to be heard, and a decision be made on who violated the law, and then on how to remedy it. You cannot have justice if one side is not heard, or is put out of business before getting to make their case.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#352

Post by justapassenger »

matkoniecz wrote: post #345
justapassenger wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ads with tracking, like it or not, are extremely beneficial to almost every single business, especially small ones who don't have that much money to spend on advertising.

And placement based ads are disappearing for a good reason - they just aren't that effective, except for specific niches.

Look, I understand that there's a lot (like a loooot) of reasons not to like ads and tracking. But let's get the facts straight about what they bring.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#353

Post by bobbruno »

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…

Removing the possibility of financing phones and calls through ads changes the entire market dynamic. I can’t say for sure that the ad-free prices wouldn’t drop because they were suddenly the only option available and scale gains (or a survival need) would drive costs down.

Companies won’t lower their prices if they don’t have to, but they will go to great lengths to survive…

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#354

Post by justapassenger »

_Algernon_ wrote: post #335
justapassenger wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any addiction is worsening people's mental health. Social media are part of it, sure, but it's naive to think that getting rid of Facebook will solve the problem. Hacker news is also addictive and has lots of people who spend way too much here and it's worsening their mental health.

HN is a poor example, as it actually provides settings to limit addictive usage (maxvisit and minaway), thereby putting the user in control.

Most of social apps nowadays have usage trackers, that will prompt you that you exceeded time you wanted to spend on it.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#355

Post by BlueTemplar »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #328
matheusmoreira wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea why this is being downvoted. It's high time there were consequences for the USA's global warrantless surveillance. Every single country should do what Europe is doing.

> No idea why this is being downvoted my first reaction was that people might be unaware of the CloudAct, or the FVYE arrangement (AABill) that forces Austrialians working in any Tech company to stay silent if their government forces them to hide a backdoor in code (likely on behalf of yank big brother). but then anyone who today defends Snowden is called a "tankie" and friend of the Russian invasion of UA. The truth…

Not to minimize the horrible fratricidal war in Ukraine since the Russian invasion in 2014,

while Russia (and China) are worse in theory, they don't present nearly the same "insider" threat to the EU as the US does with the GAFAMs.

... though China has been catching up fast : TikTok, their (not so) low end smartphones flooding the market, Huawei basically owning EU's telecom infrastructure (with a bit of US' Cisco)... :

https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/5g-elephant-in-the-room/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26843068

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#356

Post by LegionMammal978 »

pyrale wrote: post #325
Kalium wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so when you say a crazy way of making laws, you mean the way that laws basically get made? I think what's being characterized as crazy is that the laws as written are at best vague. It takes years to find out what they actually mean in implementable detail. This makes it very difficult to comply. Have you read through GDPR? I have. It talks a lot about "reasonable measures" and includes vast swaths of other laws wh…

> This makes it very difficult to comply. It is really not hard at all to comply with GDPR. Don't collect private informations you don't need, and don't share them. Now what's hard is to build a system that complies with GDPR's letter _and_ breaks GDPR's intent. And you know what? That's intended.

> It is really not hard at all to comply with GDPR. Don't collect private informations you don't need, and don't share them.

The problem is, not all personal data corresponds to the intuitive notion of "private informations". For instance, I, as a U.S. citizen, would be violating the GDPR if I operated a dumb HTTP server that stores request logs indefinitely and does no other processing, such as "python3 -m http.server". (IP addresses are personal data, and U.S. authorities can make me turn over my logs; thus, I cannot store the logs for however long I want.)

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#357

Post by KarlKemp »

starbugs wrote: post #298
Fargren wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not totally sure that's allowed under GDPR. I know you can't say "consent to data collection or you can't use the website" [1]. So I doubt "consent to data collection OR PAY or you can't use the website" is acceptable. [1] unless the data is needed for the website to work

Seems to be quite common practice for some news outlets here in Germany. I remember that I read a court decision stating that this would for some reason be acceptable. Not sure if it really is though.

That’s advertising, not targeted advertising, isn’t it?

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#358

Post by [deleted] »

CogitoCogito wrote: post #263
Kalium wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so when you say a crazy way of making laws, you mean the way that laws basically get made? I think what's being characterized as crazy is that the laws as written are at best vague. It takes years to find out what they actually mean in implementable detail. This makes it very difficult to comply. Have you read through GDPR? I have. It talks a lot about "reasonable measures" and includes vast swaths of other laws wh…

It sounds like the recent decisions are making the laws less vague are they not? Shouldn’t that make everyone happy (other than those who are invested in other legal realities)?

[deleted]

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#359

Post by Kalium »

Macha wrote: post #259
Kalium wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so when you say a crazy way of making laws, you mean the way that laws basically get made? I think what's being characterized as crazy is that the laws as written are at best vague. It takes years to find out what they actually mean in implementable detail. This makes it very difficult to comply. Have you read through GDPR? I have. It talks a lot about "reasonable measures" and includes vast swaths of other laws wh…

Reasonable is a common term in laws, see for example the "reasonable person test" which is widespread in US civil law. Laws are not written like electrical codes in the most part because such specific laws either explicitly enumerate what is permissible (which is more ok for something like "acceptable methods of wiring a house" than "acceptable uses of data") or are rendered obsolete by the first thing the law writer…

It is, but generally reasonableness comes with useful legal context to help you understand what it means.

In the context of GDPR? I was left guessing what a regulator in Brussels might consider reasonable when their path to career advancement might run through my employer. Coupled with being uncertain what various national regulators (or empowered industry bodies) might add in, as they were allowed to do so until quite literally the last second. It left a person with no good way of judging what might be considered reasonable, only nervous paranoia.

It was a distinctly unpleasant experience and one I was left thinking was both anticipated and avoidable.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#360

Post by Kalium »

pyrale wrote: post #325
Kalium wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so when you say a crazy way of making laws, you mean the way that laws basically get made? I think what's being characterized as crazy is that the laws as written are at best vague. It takes years to find out what they actually mean in implementable detail. This makes it very difficult to comply. Have you read through GDPR? I have. It talks a lot about "reasonable measures" and includes vast swaths of other laws wh…

> This makes it very difficult to comply. It is really not hard at all to comply with GDPR. Don't collect private informations you don't need, and don't share them. Now what's hard is to build a system that complies with GDPR's letter _and_ breaks GDPR's intent. And you know what? That's intended.

Can you define "private informations" and "need" in unambiguous ways, please? In my experience it's shockingly hard to do so once you get beyond the basics.

Even when you have clear legal obligations to collect a bunch of private data, you still have to figure what reasonable measures to protect it are. What's a reasonable measure when you're obligated to keep seven years of financial records about your customers in a way that lets you produce ready reports for regulators? Complete with mandatory personal identifiers for tax purposes?

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