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EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

reuters.com

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Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#431

Post by IX-103 »

renegat0x0 wrote: post #212
lefstathiou wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, as can Apple, Google, every cable company, every telecom, the credit card companies, Grindr, health clinics

Credit company does not have microphone near your bed, they do not know which posts you like, or not, they do not have all your mails, and not necessarily know where you drive and how often. Keeping all of the data under one company umbrella is vulnerable, target for hackers, and easy target for governments. Your post is not correct.

Do you have evidence that these companies are using the microphones in their devices for tracking? Or that they are using "all your emails" for ad targeting? If not please quit kicking that strawman.

There are real privacy issues here, but this kind of paranoia distracts us from mitigating the actual threats and has us jumping at shadows.

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#432

Post by masswerk »

pembrook wrote: post #75

Ok, my contrarian hot take (for HN at least). The real entities we need to be afraid of in regards to privacy are governments & politicians, not companies & entrepreneurs. The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap. The government on the other hand can literally ruin your life (or even end it in some countries). The EU is doing a fantastic job of keeping everyone distracted by pointing the finger a…

Hum, if these behavioural profiles and assessments spill over to financial institutions, employment, housing, (private) education, etc., these harmless "companies & entrepreneurs" may have more impact on your personal life and your chances in life than government in a democratic country.

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#433

Post by Lutger »

pembrook wrote: post #75

Ok, my contrarian hot take (for HN at least). The real entities we need to be afraid of in regards to privacy are governments & politicians, not companies & entrepreneurs. The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap. The government on the other hand can literally ruin your life (or even end it in some countries). The EU is doing a fantastic job of keeping everyone distracted by pointing the finger a…

> Ok, my contrarian hot take (for HN at least). The real entities we need to be afraid of in regards to privacy are governments & politicians, not companies & entrepreneurs.

I don't think this is a contrarian view here, look at the comments a lot of people are very negative about the GDPR and just fine with how Meta collects data. There are quite a lot of libertarians here.

> The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap.

A company could make you dependent on their services, and then shut you out. Or sell your personal info to future employers. Or massively pollute and destroy the environment and climate. Or sell important medicine for crazy margins. There are even mercenary companies waging war and engaging in torture. Selling me more soap isn't the worst I expect from companies, by far.

> The EU is doing a fantastic job of keeping everyone distracted by pointing the finger at the "evil American tech companies" while simultaneously doing the opposite when it comes to privacy from government...which is the real threat.

You are suggesting this has some vague evil hidden agenda, I find that entirely implausible. You don't have any evidence for this. I'm not even sure what you are hinting at, the possible ban on encryption? Do you seriously think this case against Meta is a way to make people somehow not notice that kind of legislation, how?

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#434

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

nonethewiser wrote: post #363
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't understand why this only applies for Facebook then. It doesn't.

Can you elaborate? That's not how the article makes it sound. > The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has instructed the Irish data regulator, where Meta’s European headquarters are located, to impose a permanent ban on Meta’s use of behavioural advertising within two weeks. The EDPB states that its decision is an urgent binding instruction to enforce the ban across the EEA. Is the same happening at the newspaper…

> Is the same happening at the newspapers?

You can look at the cases that noyb is fighting in court and you can see that plenty of them go against newspapers.

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#435

Post by zirgs »

LightHugger wrote: post #100
pembrook wrote: post #75

Ok, my contrarian hot take (for HN at least). The real entities we need to be afraid of in regards to privacy are governments & politicians, not companies & entrepreneurs. The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap. The government on the other hand can literally ruin your life (or even end it in some countries). The EU is doing a fantastic job of keeping everyone distracted by pointing the finger a…

When you realize that large enough corporations are a form of government, your way of thinking really starts falling to bits... But, the government is the solution to when business gets too much power. You can't convince a profit motivated corporation to stop doing something evil as long as it's profitable, so it's the government's job to protect people from corporate governance.

Google has more money than the government of my country. Someone at google can decide whether to spend like 19B to pay Apple to keep Google the default search engine on iOS. Not a single politician can decide that here. Our government budget is less than 19B. It's scary to think that there are corporations more powerful than governments.

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#437

Post by spinningslate »

PaulHoule wrote: post #388
lapphi wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upon logging into okcupid today I received a pop up inviting me to join The League (another dating app), with my phone number already pre-propagated. After accepting, they sent me this email. > We use the combination of your Facebook and LinkedIn data plus your About Me and Photos to ensure we are building a balanced, high-achieving and diverse community. Our screening algorithm looks at indicators like social influe…

One of those things y'all never upvote is papers about psychodiagnostic software that uses your social media posts, cell phone location data, etc. to diagnose both chronic and acute psychiatric conditions. I'm fairly certain that if a person is highly active on social media such a system could produce a better diagnosis than most people get when they see a professional, if only because the quality of psychodiagnosis…

I think you've neatly summarised why it doesn't get upvoted:

1. "could" produce a better diagnosis. Not guaranteed. And better than what? How likely is it to really deliver a better result than appropriately trained specialists? 2. "scam to satisfy insurance bureaucrats". And you doing it digitally won't find its way to unintended recipients?

The undercurrent of this thread - and the original post - is growing awareness of the dystopian disaster that has grown out of "free" social media. So it's not surprising - to me, at any rate - that the general sentiment here is to be suspicious of any adjacent use.

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#438

Post by xxs »

alkonaut wrote: post #420
xxs wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Dark theme Windows has had themes/color schemes since 3.0 - yes the early 90s Ray tracing has nothing to do with Windows, either

Dark theme isn't the windows color theming that always existed. It's the actual system setting that instructs apps to use dark mode. It's in UXTheme.dll (an OS lib) and the function app devs use to query it is ShouldSystemUseDarkMode(). This was introduced in Windows 10 1903. Drawing the line between the OS and "not the OS" is really difficult. Direct X is included with the OS and DX12 is not compatible with Windows…

> It's the actual system setting that instructs apps to use dark mode.

Dark mode being use as a short hand - pretty much all "standard" controls used to have colors and font size defined. So if an application wants to draw text - it'd use the text area background and color, likewise for buttons. Being replaced with a single boolean configuration option is just a lazy downgrade. Also I don't quite see it as an OS function - in the end it just reads the registry.

Vulcan was supported on Win7 (along w/ the raytracing) and oddly enough Win7 had a port of DX12 by Microsoft [0]. It was quite an arbitrary decision to prevent Win7 & 8 to run DX12. I suppose one of the issues is that GPU drivers (esp. AMD) do not support Win7 (or 8)

[0]: https://venturebeat.com/pc-gaming/directx-12-windows-7/

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#439

Post by speed_spread »

mjburgess wrote: post #90

Comments here so far focus on personalised ads as the issue -- but that's a symptom of what's being banned, which is the mass collection of personal data. Personalised ads are beside the point. The issue is how they are personalised, namely by building a rich profile of user behaviour based on non-consensual tracking. It isnt even clear that there's a meaningful sense of 'consent' to what modern ad companies (ie., go…

> end any form of privacy [..] only for ads

It is safe to assume that all intelligence agencies have taps on ad networks allowing to legally (well, not in EU anymore) collect mass of information on the cheap, which they can then de-anonymize at will by cross-referencing with other data sources.

Re: EU data regulator bans personalised advertising on Facebook and Instagram

#440

Post by RestlessMind »

pembrook wrote: post #75

Ok, my contrarian hot take (for HN at least). The real entities we need to be afraid of in regards to privacy are governments & politicians, not companies & entrepreneurs. The worst thing a company can do is try to sell you more soap. The government on the other hand can literally ruin your life (or even end it in some countries). The EU is doing a fantastic job of keeping everyone distracted by pointing the finger a…

Here is the worst thing you are doing - creating a false dichotomy. We should be weary of both the companies and the governments when it comes to privacy.
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