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Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

reuters.com

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Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#501

Post by tacocataco »

ricardo81 wrote: post #307
wpietri wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this has stopped working not because of platform fear, but because it no longer solves a problem. Back in the day, good content was scarce and discovery was hard. These days neither is true. If my to-read list weren't already overflowing, 30 minutes poking around on Twitter would fill it right up.

Think there's a bit chicken and egg with that one. Back in the day Google relied on DMOZ (and perhaps relies on Wiki a little nowadays, WRT knowledge entities). Search (and social) rely on signals to indicate that something is of relevance... you're sort of implying that the monopolies and their single perspectives on how information should be ordered is satisfactory for us right now. Sometimes there's 10's, 100's or…

So something like stumbleupon with a search bar to search for certain topics?

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#502

Post by remus »

mnw21cam wrote: post #495
remus wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can the company simply cut you off then? Yes. They're offering you the service under a particular set of terms. If you don't like those terms then the company is not obliged to adjust it's terms to suit you (assuming the terms themselves are legal in the first place, for example they don't break anti-discrimination law). In theory you could try negotiating the terms with the company to something that is more favour…

No. It's explicitly set out in the GDPR that refusal to agree to the unnecessary collection of personal data must not be a reason to withhold service.

I think this falls under the part where I said

> (assuming the terms themselves are legal in the first place, for example they don't break anti-discrimination law)

As you mentioned, GDPR explicitly states that you can't extort personal data from people by withholding service. However in the broader sense a company can refuse service if you don't agree to their terms.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#503

Post by remus »

mnw21cam wrote: post #500
sbarre wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, thank you! I'll have to look that up further.. This seems remarkable (not right/wrong) to me, that a private non-essential enterprise can be forced to service a customer who does not agree to their terms of use.

There is plenty of precedent. For instance, a private non-essential enterprise is not allowed to refuse service to a customer because they do not agree to never buy anything from their competitor.

I think we're making different points here.

Where a company comes up with some terms that are illegal those particular clauses in the terms are unenforcable, but if the terms are within the law then they're the contract between you and the company, and both sides have to agree for the contract to be binding i.e. before the company will provide you the goods/service specified in the contract. If you don't agree to the terms then there's no agreement between you and the company, and the company is under no obligation to provide you with service.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#504

Post by robertlagrant »

M2Ys4U wrote: post #288
robertlagrant wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A tracking ID isn't PII, though?

What is or isn't PII, which is a US legal term, is irrelevant. What matters is if it's Personal Data. Personal Data is defined by the GDPR as: "‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification…

Fair point on PII.

But to the rest of your post: I don't think so. I think there an identification number is something like a government-issued ID number.

An online identifier would have to identify you (e.g. my Hacker News username is probably identifiable).

The way I think of it is if someone who isn't authorised to know who I am can look in a system at the number and then go off and correlate that info to find me without further reference to other data in said system.

A database ID doesn't count, because you'd then need to look up something actually identifiable in the system to figure out who I am; neither does an opaque tracking number.

My social security number is identifiable; my email address may be identifiable; if I gave birth in region X to octuplets, then that probably is too.

Re: Facebook to move UK users to California terms, avoiding EU privacy rules

#506

Post by furyg3 »

fastball wrote: post #118
furyg3 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understood this. If the freedoms outlined in the constitution are universal and inalienable, shouldn't the US also apply them, well, universally? Like do you believe in them or not?

The purpose of the US was to protect these rights for their own citizens / residents. Protecting those rights for the entire world is a bit out-of-scope.

Very late response but wanted to clarify, I'm not saying it's the duty of the US government to actively protect the rights of the entire population of the world. That's actually quite a radical perspective (I always found the 'bring them freedom' argument for invading Iraq quite an interesting position for conservatives to take).

But what I instead mean is that if the US government interacts with non-citizens outside of its own borders (as it often does), shouldn't it respect the the 'inalienable' rights 'all men' have? That would preclude them from engaging in torture, detention of non-combatants without trial, mass surveillance of foreigners, etc.

What I mean is that it shouldn't matter if a person is a US citizen or not; if the US government is interacting with people, it should respect the rights it believes all people to intrinsically have. Again, that is different than proactively 'bringing' people those freedoms.

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