Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 441 posts

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#81

Post by rglullis »

Dayshine wrote: post #78
Kenji wrote: post #23

I don't understand why the state has to become involved. Let the free market work and people decide for themselves. I stopped using WhatsApp the moment I read that facebook bought it.

Because the free market is very slow, and it's a greater total harm. Would you rather your child learned which items are hot by scarring themselves each time?

That analogy makes no sense, and your view of consumers and individuals as children is patronizing.

Free markets also include the spread of information and signaling. People can learn from the mistakes from others. It is precisely in a free market where the information gets to be spread out the quickest.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#82

Post by heinrich5991 »

necessity wrote: post #68
Grangar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These terms and conditions are untransparent garbage. It's estimated that if a person was to read everything they agree too, they'd be busy 24/7.

I remember there was a website that supplied tl;drs of EULAs from popular websites. Anyone knows it?

Googling "tldr eula" gives me https://tosdr.org/.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#83

Post by strugglefun »

Mithaldu wrote: post #21
thecatspaw wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"please turn off your adblocker" yeah, no thanks. Do you have another link?

Just load it with javascript disabled. You may need to find a sane browser for that. Opera 12 does that job fine for me.

or http://textise.net .

Edit: Example Result: https://www.textise.net/showText.aspx?strURL=http%253A//www....

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#84

Post by fauigerzigerk »

zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC wrote: post #59
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you put trade in organs in the same basket as trade in conclusions from personal data, then I have to wonder what you put in the other basket, the one where consenting adults are allowed to freely enter into agreements. If you are criticising that people are not willingly and knowingly entering into agreements with Facebook or Google, that is another debate. Yes I think there should be the utmost level of transpar…

The reason why government should forbid it is not to protect the individual that's agreeing to give away their data, but to protect society from the externalities of those transactions when they occur en masse. Privacy is a necessity for a democracy, without it, democracy falls apart, that is extremely dangerous, and that's why a democratic society should protect itself against it.

>The reason why government should forbid it is not to protect the individual that's agreeing to give away their data, but to protect society from the externalities of those transactions when they occur en masse.

And now please explain to me what sort of voluntary agreement does not have negative externalities when it occurs en masse! Voluntary agreements inevitably create markets and markets have well known negative externalities. Even the democratic process itself has negative externalities. On that basis you can ban everything.

I'm not against all regulation, but your justification is way too general. It leads straight into authoritarianism.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#85

Post by wsy »

danarmak wrote: post #77
rmc wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think dense legalise in a click through can count as "consent"

This is a real problem. What's the alternative? The TOS does need to express the desired purpose and to hold up in court if required. Some licenses are much simpler than others, but some are necessarily complex. The GPL is much shorter than most click-through TOSs, but an average user still isn't going to read it.

German law requires to use opt-in, i.e. the default setting of agreements to transfer data to other parties must be 'no' (or the checkbox must be empty). That way, it is very easy to make sure there is explicit consent to transfer of data, and the service provider can't hide it in the TOS. Of course, the service provider is also free to limit or close its services to users that do not consent. That is actually what the German data protection watchdog refers to: the WhatsApp setting that controls if the data is transmitted is by default enabled (opt-out), but should be disabled (opt-in).

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#87

Post by 72deluxe »

krrrh wrote: post #66
greggman wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I mind FB collecting data on my when using FB directly. OTOH today I read a 10 minute article on an unrelated site about loneliness. When I got to the end of the article an in page popup appeared that said something along the lines of "Liked by 9571 people including your friend John Smith". I was extremely creeped out. What right does FB have for knowing that I read some article on an unrelated website?…

On the Mac there is an old app called Fluid that makes this process easier; single website browsers appear as separate applications.

Thanks for this, I would never have discovered this useful app without you. Thanks.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#88

Post by strugglefun »

rglullis wrote: post #81
Dayshine wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the free market is very slow, and it's a greater total harm. Would you rather your child learned which items are hot by scarring themselves each time?

That analogy makes no sense, and your view of consumers and individuals as children is patronizing. Free markets also include the spread of information and signaling. People can learn from the mistakes from others. It is precisely in a free market where the information gets to be spread out the quickest.

I did not find the above comment patronizing.

Some types of signaling are best to be learned before it becomes a problem. Like killing.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#89

Post by pdkl95 »

danarmak wrote: post #74
pdkl95 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> any data, besides name, password, email address Collect any data you want if and only if you have the informed consent of the user. This means explaining in detail what you're intending to collect and gaining permission first (opt-in). > This information can never be sold. Sell the information if you want (that was collected with informed consent of the user), but collecting data brings a responsibility of care for…

Users already opt into using a service like WhatsApp. They are presented with TOS on first use / account creation. Whatsapp changed their TOS and presented the new TOS to existing users when they first opened the app after the change. Doesn't this already satisfy your requirements? It is, of course, well known that users never read TOS / EULA for software or services.

> WhatsApp

I'm not talking about WhatsApp.

> users never read TOS / EULA

Then the user hasn't given informed consent! It's the responsibility of the collecting party to make sure that the user is aware of all aspects of the transaction.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#90

Post by saiya-jin »

smoyer wrote: post #17
microtonal wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now things are going to get interesting! I completely understand the desire for privacy but I thinkmit's unrealistic to expect that Facebook won't consolidate its data by user across all their applications. Facebook (and Google, etc.) are now in the same business as the credit reporting agencies ... You are their only product. The difference in this particular case is that Whatsapp made an explicit promise that they…

I read that blog post when the acquisition was announced ... And laughed! While it feels like the (then) WhatsApp CEO was sincere, did anyone really believe that Zuckerberg would be a hands-off owner? Or that his public-only data content ideas wouldn't become dominant? I'll agree that I think this move contradicts his blog post but I also don't think the purchased entity gets to set the terms after agreeing to be bou…

you wouldn't pay 2 billion for messaging app with few hundred millions of users that is without ads and doesn't make any money to be philanthropic about it, would you (or anybody else)
Post reply on HN