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The title is a bit misleading. > Meta is now prohibited to bypass the GDPR via a clause in the terms and conditions. Meta has to get "opt-in" consent for personalized advertisement and must provide users with a "yes/no" option
It's one thing to provide on opt-in for new users, but will this mean retroactively resetting ALL users to no?
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> why would the users say no? One can agree with the measure and disagree with its deployment. Here, a quasi-judicial body with opaquely-appointed members created a rule ex post facto . It’s a good opinion. But that sort of unpredictability obviously has a cost. (Agencies in America face similar criticism.)
I guess I don't understand the unpredictability argument. Everything that I've read since GDPR passed 4+ years ago has predicted that Facebook's data harvesting would be illegal. It was a very straightforward and predictable consequence of the law.
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Just because we somehow ended up in a situation where spyware got effectively decriminalised doesn't mean it's a good situation especially in the long-term. If nobody is willing to pay for your product, maybe it shouldn't exist?
How much do you pay for HN?
Not everything needs to be monetised (or directly monetised) to serve a purpose.
"Users therefore need to be provided with a yes/no ("opt-in") consent option, otherwise Meta may not use their data for personalized advertisement." I guess Facebook's solution could be a pop-up asking whether you want to continue using it as before or if you want to deny access to your personal data and pay $50 a month.
I don't see a problem paying for Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. I used to pay for WhatsApp back in the day.
Heck, I even pay for WinRAR.
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If I am understanding this correctly, GDPR means that you must legally accept free riders, ie. you cannot deny service if they don't want it. Mandating companies to serve users who provide no value at all is an example of the regulatory requirements that spill down to hurting regular consumers and workers in Europe. You can see this across all sorts of fields, youth unemployment in Europe (for example) is a mess.
I don't think you're understanding it correctly, Meta is still free to serve normal contextual ads to all users so they can make money. There are many other sustainable business models they could try out if they aren't able to get their customers to pay for that sort of ad. They are not mandated to provide any kind of service to anyone.
Seems pretty blatantly a mandate to continue providing service regardless of users' actions.
Given that what is shown on the feed is also personalized, the "contextual ads" still allowed bit makes no sense to me.
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I feel it doesn't, as it doesn't even try to present any sort of nuanced argument, it's really just nationalistic flame-bait.
It's one thing to express the opinion that one worries that excessive regulation might mean a competitive disadvantage in the long run. It's quite another to accuse the whole continent of Europe to be "free-loaders" just because some (paywalled) opinion piece in the Economist wrote it, or to accuse it of making its people poorer.
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> why would the users say no? One can agree with the measure and disagree with its deployment. Here, a quasi-judicial body with opaquely-appointed members created a rule ex post facto . It’s a good opinion. But that sort of unpredictability obviously has a cost. (Agencies in America face similar criticism.)
I guess I don't understand the unpredictability argument. Everything that I've read since GDPR passed 4+ years ago has predicted that Facebook's data harvesting would be illegal. It was a very straightforward and predictable consequence of the law.
The Irish DPA disagreed. We can write that off as biased, but that’s sort of the point. Each member DPA has its pet biases, and predicting how they’ll act and how those actions amalgamate at the EDPS is nontrivial. That’s a cost of doing business in Europe that derived from GDPR’s bureaucratic design, not from its regulatory aims.
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Spy on people? If you like a post on Instagram it is core to their service that they log that information. If they didn't, the app wouldn't work very well.
"Personal data" as mentioned in the article includes more than just logging what posts you liked. I'm sure you knew that already.
1. Showed you posts
2. Used what posts you liked to show you more posts you'd like
3. Also used that data to show you ads you're more likely to click on
4. Didn't give you a free choice on whether they did (3)
Would still be illegal under the GDPR.
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Countries would block access for business advertising or operating with Facebook, and may even decide to block access to their users.
Punishing companies directly that do business with Facebook/Meta would probably be the strongest deterrent. If we can sanction countries, why not companies?
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Why do you participate in discussion about the GDPR when you clearly know nothing about it? Of course a "like" or any kind of data that is core to the service doesn't infringe the GDPR. The illegal part is about processing or forwarding personal data of users to third parties, when users haven't agreed to that aspect of the "service". You usually see the distinction between "functional" and "advertising" cookies in t…
> Of course a "like" or any kind of data that is core to the service doesn't infringe the GDPR I’ve heard many “of course X or Y” pertaining to GDPR that turned out wrong. Because it’s a law interpreted by twenty-seven separate DPAs. GDPR’s aims are good. But there is legitimate criticism in its design.
I don't blame Americans or others for not knowing this, but the amount of bad takes about the GDPR by Silicon Valley people in particular is so ridiculous. Every single comment section about a GDPR topic on HN has a bunch of Americans talking about how Europe is some backwards, regulatory hellhole, always talking from a position of total ignorance.