Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

tutanota.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

381–390 of 409 posts

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#381

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

jamiequint wrote: post #202
kaapipo wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how is this helpful? Is this a solution? What if the app-in-question was a different one? Not using Instagram at that would be very helpful, indeed...

Of course it's a solution. The developer has a right to comply with the law in whichever way they see to best fit their needs as a business. If you don't like it then don't use the app, nobody is forcing you to and you don't have a right to dictate to others how to run their business.

> The developer has a right to comply with the law in whichever way they see to best fit their needs as a business.

The key point here being "comply with". "Let me track you or you can't use this", confusing or coercive "consent" dialogs etc. don't comply.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#382

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

KarlKemp wrote: post #357
starbugs wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Some of them give you the choice between "targeted advertising with tracking, free" and "completely ad-free, paid".

Others give you the choice between targeted advertising and paying for non-targeted advertising, or three choices (free with targeted ads, paid with non-targeted ads, paid a lot with no ads).

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#383

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

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.

Common practice is no indicator for it being legal. Most of the consent dialogs were illegal, it just isn't being enforced.

Note how the Google and Instagram consent dialogs changed in the past year or so. I'm sure that wasn't voluntary...

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#384

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

rootusrootus wrote: post #276
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

What a world we live in where government has decreed that business must provide services for free. No wonder people vote for that.

They don't have to provide the service. They can charge money for the service (but then they probably will go bankrupt because few people are willing to pay for it, because the service isn't that great).

They can show ads on the service. They can even ask people to opt in to targeted advertising.

What they can't do is harvest people's personal data to monetize the service.

In other words: You can give away potatoes for free. You can sell potatoes for money. You can sell potatoes for onions. You can, in many countries, even sell potatoes for sexual favors, although there will be some rules to protect against exploitation. What you cannot do, in most countries, is sell potatoes for kidneys, and you most definitely can't sell potatoes while surreptitiously removing customer's kidneys and hoping they don't notice or care enough because they have two and you're only taking one.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#385

Post by tgsovlerkhgsel »

Fargren wrote: post #210
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'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

This is not 100% clear. The Austrian DPA has declared it legal, which is why many are doing it: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=6cdf29db-aa57...

This is currently being contested by NOYB.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#386

Post by qubex »

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…

I think a key point to consider is that when buying a good or service that has a quoted price, a consumer can make an informed decision as to whether that good or service’s utility to the exceeds the utility of price being asked for. When there’s all sorts of tracking going on behind the scenes and advertising that leads to them getting better targeted ads (which presumably lead to them spending more, because otherwise firms would not pay to have such targeted ads) then it becomes an opaque situation that does not allow the consumer to make a reasonable calculation.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#387

Post by qubex »

justapassenger wrote: post #352
matkoniecz wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Personalised & tracking ads are beneficial firms because they extract more revenue from consumers. That means it makes consumers poorer by diverting a larger fraction of their disposable income.

As such, I couldn’t care less whether personalised ads are beneficial to big or large firms and help their bottom line. These laws are (rightly, IMHO) targeted at protecting consumers and so I’m glad they’ve been passed and are being enforced.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#388

Post by thiht »

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…

> according to their fair reading of that law

I get the feeling that you can bypass laws in the US based on technicalities and loopholes. In the EU, it’s the intent of the laws that matters, not how the words are written first degree. And the intent is pretty fucking clear: don’t mess with EU citizens private data. I can’t wait for Facebook to die and will never care that they spent billions trying to bypass EU laws for nothing.

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#389

Post by qubex »

jonathankoren wrote: post #227
marvindanig wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah, but flat design is also skeuomorphic. methinks it was just some strategic intellectualism with no legs to look down on everything else that people made. clever tricks of the hive mind.

> ah, but flat design is also skeuomorphic. Please elaborate

I can see this rapidly ‘degenerating’ into “what is a chair? Is a tree stump you sit on a chair?”- or “is there such a thing as a ‘chair’, after all ‘chair’ is an abstract concept and what we sit on is physical items”-type discussions.

“It’s skeuomorphic because it reminds me of icons which are things”

Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe

#390

Post by Supernaut »

Nextgrid wrote: post #375
nibbleshifter wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Big "if". The Irish DPA is about as useful as a marzipan dildo due to being chronically underfunded.

Calling them chronically underfunded is very charitable. Corrupt would be a more accurate term considering they’ve privately collaborated with Facebook on ways to effectively bypass the regulation they’re supposed to be enforcing, in disagreement with most other DPAs.

Citation, please?
Post reply on HN