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

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

#41

Post by rb666 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #39
chii wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nobody likes to be made an example of. However, regulators like to make examples of bigger corporations since the publicity is more effective with them, and also they are able to both pay up and/or change.

Fair application of regulations is essential to rule of law. Going after one company for a common practice but not others is simply the more tyrannical rule by law.

It's a matter of priorities as well. There's hardly funding to prosecute everyone that breaks any sort of law. So you aim for the big fish. Many more are "hurt" by FB's practices than some random other small player. In that sense, FB is committing the larger crime.

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

#42

Post by EggsOnToast »

colmvp wrote: post #26
derefr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the implication is more, "why are you only paying attention to us ? If you think this is a bad practice, then you should be going after our competitors , too." Corporations tend not to mind if you take away a business strategy of theirs, as long as you take it away from everybody else at the same time. If you only take it away from one corporation, that corporation will be temporarily outcompeted by the corpo…

Funny. If your site drops dramatically on Google's search results, or if YouTube/Facebook bans your account for reasons, tough luck. They are a corporation and can do whatever they want without resorting to any sort of internal consistency. But heaven forbid governments hold a dominant corporation accountable in the public interest.

>Funny. If your site drops dramatically on Google's search results, or if YouTube/Facebook bans your account for reasons, tough luck. They are a corporation and can do whatever they want without resorting to any sort of internal consistency.

That's not really relevant to the parent's observation that Facebook is likely arguing that they're being singled out in an environment where their practices are so rampant as to be standard.

>But heaven forbid governments hold a dominant corporation accountable in the public interest.

"accountable to the public interest" is an incredibly disingenuous way to say "enforce their laws". The difference matters in this context because the counter argument would be "why is the law being enforced predominantly against a handful of American companies instead of the industry at large?"

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

#43

Post by [deleted] »

rb666 wrote: post #41
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair application of regulations is essential to rule of law. Going after one company for a common practice but not others is simply the more tyrannical rule by law.

It's a matter of priorities as well. There's hardly funding to prosecute everyone that breaks any sort of law. So you aim for the big fish. Many more are "hurt" by FB's practices than some random other small player. In that sense, FB is committing the larger crime.

[deleted]

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

#44

Post by EggsOnToast »

dmix wrote: post #30
allthenews wrote: post #25

You know, I am a pretty staunch supporter of minimalistic restrictions on corporate behavior, putting faith instead in markets. But this seems like the kind of problem I'd consider looking to solve through legislation. Although I should say, not without hesitation, given the extreme discrepancy between rates of change in tech and law. I would hate to see seemingly well meaning legislation passed for something like th…

If you're a supporter of minimal legislation then what's wrong with the courts handling it, as in this case? A major tech company tracking users across the web beyond their own limited use-case platform is a relatively new phenomenon but now that it's been established in the courts as a big financial and PR risk then there is a big deterrent from future companies doing it. And often courts in other western countries…

The enforcement of laws matters just as much as the quantity of the laws in my opinion. In this case the argument being made by Facebook is basically "everyone does this so why are we being selectively targeted?" Obviously it makes sense to start with the biggest offenders but it's hard to believe that the EU's apparent tunnel vision on applying the law to American companies is because of a lack of resources.

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

#45

Post by candiodari »

dmix wrote: post #30
allthenews wrote: post #25

You know, I am a pretty staunch supporter of minimalistic restrictions on corporate behavior, putting faith instead in markets. But this seems like the kind of problem I'd consider looking to solve through legislation. Although I should say, not without hesitation, given the extreme discrepancy between rates of change in tech and law. I would hate to see seemingly well meaning legislation passed for something like th…

If you're a supporter of minimal legislation then what's wrong with the courts handling it, as in this case? A major tech company tracking users across the web beyond their own limited use-case platform is a relatively new phenomenon but now that it's been established in the courts as a big financial and PR risk then there is a big deterrent from future companies doing it. And often courts in other western countries…

> If you're a supporter of minimal legislation then what's wrong with the courts handling it, as in this case?

Simple: that the courts won't handle it. It is not reasonable to expect either customers or the courts to actively go after companies that use this sort of tracking internationally.

They can go after companies with a global presence, by doing so locally, and of course because these companies will actually fight it instead of just ignoring them. So Facebook is a target of convenience, but convicting it will not yield any results (if necessary Facebook will just use an intermediary, besides Facebook is being targeted because politicians like to stick it to Facebook atm).

You can say "just change the law", but a lot needs to happen beside that to make this practice stop. None of that is happening, so this practice won't stop as a result of this. It's just a PR grab for some politicians.

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

#46

Post by onetimemanytime »

fouc wrote: post #2

>“The cookies and pixels we use are industry standard technologies and enable hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow their businesses and reach customers across the EU,” said Facebook’s VP of public policy for EMEA If it is "industry standard", does that make it ethical?

If it is "industry standard", does that make it ethical?

Industry here is essentially Google and Facebook. The other "players" fight for the crumbs. Ethical? They need growth, every quarter.

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

#47

Post by seanmcdirmid »

rb666 wrote: post #41
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair application of regulations is essential to rule of law. Going after one company for a common practice but not others is simply the more tyrannical rule by law.

It's a matter of priorities as well. There's hardly funding to prosecute everyone that breaks any sort of law. So you aim for the big fish. Many more are "hurt" by FB's practices than some random other small player. In that sense, FB is committing the larger crime.

Picking the large foreign company is always an easy target, it can easily lead to protectionism: enforce laws on the outsiders but not the insiders. China is an extreme case of this: foreign companies must walk on egg shells while domestic companies are able to easily break laws now and ask for forgiveness later if the party decides to crackdown.

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

#48

Post by cyphar »

EggsOnToast wrote: post #44
dmix wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a supporter of minimal legislation then what's wrong with the courts handling it, as in this case? A major tech company tracking users across the web beyond their own limited use-case platform is a relatively new phenomenon but now that it's been established in the courts as a big financial and PR risk then there is a big deterrent from future companies doing it. And often courts in other western countries…

The enforcement of laws matters just as much as the quantity of the laws in my opinion. In this case the argument being made by Facebook is basically "everyone does this so why are we being selectively targeted?" Obviously it makes sense to start with the biggest offenders but it's hard to believe that the EU's apparent tunnel vision on applying the law to American companies is because of a lack of resources.

But Facebook and Google are the biggest and most flagrant offenders. It wouldn't make sense to go after anyone else first, and you want to have a precedent so you can go after other companies (or other companies will stop committing crimes of their own volition because being litigated against is expensive).

As for your belief that American companies are being unfairly targeted, this also doesn't make much sense to me. European companies wouldn't break the laws in the first place, Asian companies don't really compete in the European "web services" market, so the only major source of rights violations is going to be American companies.

If American companies don't want to follow European laws, they shouldn't be doing business in Europe. And why are you complaining about in which order those companies are being punished for breaking the law?

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

#49

Post by kerng »

Maarten88 wrote: post #24
oh_sigh wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps there should be a central clearinghouse for people who don't want to be tracked by certain sites. How can you tell facebook to not track you without a facebook account? The best you can do is block various known IPs or other patterns which are bound to change over time.

Yes, how to tell Facebook? Someone should invent a http header that lets you signal that you don't want to be tracked. It could be named something like DNT, for do-not-track. People could then set DNT=1 and websites such as Facebook would know not to track you...

Yeah, I found it very disingenuous back then from Google to push against this. It could be a widely accepted standard by now, and it makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately, as long as companies like big players as Facebook and Google ignore it, it won't succeed.

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

#50

Post by kerng »

One of the good things about HN is that the engineers working and building these features are likely reading these posts too, I'm curious how one implements these things. Are engineers (some of the brightest ones) not realizing that some of their actions are ethically questionable, or is the big picture not visible to the average engineer in a large company like FB? I assume that many have the exact same reaction and don't think it's okat when discussing this topic - can hardly see anyone defending the current status quo.
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