Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe
391–400 of 409 posts
Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
But a leader in what exactly? I have been looking for years for actual usage stats. E.g., MAU and UAM for VR headsets, especially ones broken out by length of ownership. I get that people are buying Oculus units because of the hype, but is there much sustained usage? If so, what exactly is keeping people engaged once the novelty wears off? As comparison, look at Amazon's smart speakers. $10 billion spent, lots of hyp…
The end result you see in the VR headset, or the games/worlds arn't really the goal. AI, and VR tech don't pay out right now. But AI is rapidly developing and Meta is one of the leaders in AI research. We could easily see chatbots, Alex like things, or even manufacturing and disability assistance. Or robots and image classification. Skies the limit. The thing is with this tech, the killer product doesn't even exist y…
Yes, I understand the theory. But you've assumed the very thing I'm questioning: "when the killer product does arrive".
Killer products for particular hyped tech visions frequently don't arrive, at least in the necessary window for a given wave of investment. We don't have jetpacks. There were people who invested in flying cars throughout the 20th century; Are they now "become to dominate leader"? Or look at Motorola's Iridium. Zepplins, wireless power transmission, vacations to the moon. All commonplace in sci-fi, and all things people have invested in. The killer product never arrived.
Facebook is doing this because Mark Zuckerberg wants to remain rich and relevant. But just because his ego can't conceive of his company becoming irrelevant doesn't mean we have to play along.
Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
Citation, please?
See https://noyb.eu/en/irish-dpc-greenlights-facebooks-gdpr-bypa... .
Thank you! Interesting reading and not a good look for the DPC in question. That said, your use of the term "corrupt" implies that she has personally profited from the draft decision, and to be fair, I don't see any suggestion of that in the noyb article.
Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
See https://noyb.eu/en/irish-dpc-greenlights-facebooks-gdpr-bypa... .
Thank you! Interesting reading and not a good look for the DPC in question. That said, your use of the term "corrupt" implies that she has personally profited from the draft decision, and to be fair, I don't see any suggestion of that in the noyb article.
You wouldn't know if it was under the table or if it was non-monetary favours such as promotions for friends/family working at Meta or the implied promise of a nice high-paying position once they're out of the DPA role.
It could also be corruption at a higher level - the only reason Big Tech likes Ireland is because it's somewhat of a tax haven and accommodates unlawful practices like this one - if they stop being accommodating the companies will leave, so there's an incentive to not piss them off too much.
Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe
#395This 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…
A pessimistic take: Europe isn’t capable of producing that many good tech companies[1]. Thus the goal of these fines is to raise money by fining foreign companies. Under that lense, the system functions perfectly as it was designed.
[1]source: a list of the largest tech companies sorted by market cap.
Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
If by "the modern form factor" you mean the slab of glass with a virtual keyboard, sure. Good for them. (Actually, I didn't look; maybe somebody else did that first. But I'll assume you checked.) They also did a bunch of the "crossing the chasm" work, and they marketed the hell out of it. But that is distinct from inventing the smartphone. Apple generally doesn't invent things; they let other people invent and pionee…
Apple didn't even do that first... or at least weren't alone doing that (though their competitors quickly failed for one reason or another, until Android)
Before the iPhone was shown off in 2007, Android was being built for devices that looked like BlackBerries, complete with the little trackball.
The first consumer Android devices came in 2008, looking a lot more like the iPhone than the BlackBerry-esque prototypes, but they kept the trackball because much of the software was still more suited for navigation with that than with the touchscreen.
Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I’m not sure what you mean with your second point. A legal need to collect and process personal data is a valid GDPR basis. You don’t need to get consent there.
You don't, but obligations under GDPR include taking "reasonable measures" to protect the private information you're obligated to collect. The point I was making is that this underscores is how difficult it is to define "reasonable measures" because not collecting private information is not always an option.
GDPR is not just about being obligated to ask for consent. Its requirements go a great deal further. Probably. Maybe. Depending on what someone unknown with an unknown background considers reasonable based on unknown factors.
I'm sure that will be easy to write requirements around. Right?
Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apple didn't even do that first... or at least weren't alone doing that (though their competitors quickly failed for one reason or another, until Android)
Before the iPhone was shown off in 2007, Android was being built for devices that looked like BlackBerries, complete with the little trackball. The first consumer Android devices came in 2008, looking a lot more like the iPhone than the BlackBerry-esque prototypes, but they kept the trackball because much of the software was still more suited for navigation with that than with the touchscreen.
I'm thinking rather of competitors the name of which I forgot, that came out at the same time or slightly before the iPhone, that had the new capacitive touchscreen tech (and used it for a full sized screen with a simulated keyboard), but little else in terms of "support" needed for a successful phone.
Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
What entitles you to spy on me? I don't give a shit about your revenue.
It's not my revenue. If you believe any business is evil if it has has paid salaries out of the revenues boosted by efficient advertising, that's your prerogative. I am open to hearing how exactly targeted advertising has damaged our society but I will not accept vague notions of spying and privacy as an argument. Most of the entities powerful enough to spy on you currently, will continue to do so discretely.
[deleted]
Re: Facebook tracking is illegal in Europe
#400Facebook 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
The GDPR has failed to reach a balanced approach to the issues from the start. They failed to account for missing and much needed technology (uniform, automatic and consistent consent mechanisms), and failed considering anonymization technology used to deliver targeted ads.
The most profound mistake is their lack of proper risk assessment, as well as proof and transparent documentation of real actual significant harm done to users, to warrant such discriminating privacy laws. In the process they are hurting everyone, including small personal blogs, news media sites, and large social media sites.
The data, if hacked, or spied on by employees, is still a privacy risk regardless if its used for targeting ads or not. The data still sits on the servers, because the applications depend on it to function properly. The number of ecommerce websites alone that do not properly handle personal data is scary; basically anyone with database access can also access all the personal data on customers. If a given CMS has a known exploit, then the data is in great risk of being leaked and abused. E.g. Never host a site on Wordpress without proper security in place.
Nevertheless. We should always maintain that the user is ultimately responsible. If they do not like Facebook, they just ought NOT to create a Facebook account. Dislike being watched when walking around in physical shops? Stay away from them. However, the actual risk to the individual user, from ads, is so miniscule that we practically have no substantive examples of harm done. The worst shit is falsehoods promoted via ads, but that is purely an policy/moderation problem. Fake pages and accounts are a much bigger problem than falsehoods promoted via ads.
Having a paid subscription model would be a valid opt-out of advertising (ads are often dishonest, so I would like to see that). The problem is, the data still sits on servers, and if leaked, this will, unlike targeted ads, pose an actual real risk of harm.
I am not against the GDPR or the EU, but it has been profoundly flawed from the beginning, costing website owners a lot of time and money trying to comply. I absolutely hate consent platforms, because they are just another third party dependency IMO...