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Facebook: We don’t need your consent
- hellofunk 7y agoTime and time we are proven again and again that Facebook has become the emblem of how far technology can go to support pure malicious intention with widespread support.
- JohnFen 7y agoIndeed. Facebook is one of the scummiest tech companies in existence.
- option 7y agofacebook is not a tech company. What new tech did it invent? It is exploiting human psychology for advertising purposes using previously existing tech
- ldarby 7y agohttps://engineering.fb.com/ https://engineering.fb.com/
- mmanfrin 7y agoReact, yarn, cassandra. Looking at the first page of your comment history, it seems a good third of your comments get downvoted. It may be wise to reread the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- satnam14 7y agoPyTorch. It's better than Tensorflow
- WilliamEdward 7y agoTech companies in general have beaten low standards and mediocrity into people's heads. Not only are they okay with using these products, they now try to recreate the same low bar set by the greater industry. Facebook should be destroyed.
- smacktoward 7y agoFacebook delenda est? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est
- hugi 7y agoThis thread was removed from the front page of HN real fast, as in—one second it's at the top of the site, the next minute it's gone. Despite being very, very relevant news and lots of discussion going on. It's disappointing, although not surprising, to know where HN's allegiences lie in this particular fight.
- hellofunk 7y agoIt's still on page 2 so it's not like it vanished. Who knows how the scoring algo works.
- usr1106 7y agoIt's on page 2 but in grey font. What does that mean? 164 points after 2 hours. Many downvotes by GDPR haters??? Edit: s/at the moment/after 2 hours/
- hellofunk 7y agoI think the grey text is something else -- like if it was already visited before or you upvoted it or something. I checked on two different browsers and it was gray on one but not on the other, so who knows.
- usr1106 7y agoYou are correct. It's the rendering applied by my Firefox, because I had visited the page before. (Outside of hn, someone sent me the link earlier)
- askytb 7y agoAs far as I know HN downranks threads with a high comment to upvote ratio, and this one probably fell under the threshold
- rock_hard 7y agoI don’t understand what’s so hard to understand about the fact that ads is what pays for Facebook to exist? It’s a key part of the offering! You get free access and get to see ads in exchange. Others have tried other business models and failed...that’s how the world works, the better offering wins! If the problem people have is ads then just make all ads illegal and we can move on. But trying to use GDPR as a lever is silly...it’s not what its intended to do, as much as some people would like it to
- thenewnewguy 7y agoIt's not the ads that are the problem, it's the widespread tracking + use of personal data that large ad networks like facebook perform. That's why they're using the _data protection_ legislature against facebook.
- lokar 7y agoJust replace "ads" with "personalized ads" in the parent FB is free because they can pay for it with personalized ads. I doubt generic ads would fund the site as it stands today.
- xg15 7y agoTo my knowledge no one asked them to be free.
- kevlawrence 7y ago> I doubt generic ads would fund the site as it stands today. Maybe that’s ok.
- alkonaut 7y agoThe reason dumber ads pay so little is because the personalized ones exist. It’s hard to say what dumb ads would be worth if they were the only ads.
- JohnFen 7y agoIf that's actually true, then Facebook is an inherently immoral service that shouldn't exist.
- VBprogrammer 7y agoHonestly, if this "loophole" is allowed to exist then the GDPR is not worth the paper it is written on. The idea that consent should be freely given is ludicrous if it can be overridden by simply including it in a term in the terms and conditions. Facebook could probably write that they can kill or castrate the user at any time and most of their users wouldn't notice it (until the media picked it up).
- egdod 7y agoThere was a South Park episode about this... the human centipad.
- ComputerGuru 7y agoIn the United States time and again legal precedent has been set and reinforced that TOS is not a binding legal agreement but it’s somewhat of a grey area just what it actually is and what can and can’t be considered “fair warning” for being there. The American courts don’t really place a premium on privacy so that’s generally been summarily dispatched with and its ramifications ignored, but other jurisdictions clearly don’t feel the same.
- thepangolino 7y agoHasn’t there already been rulings against those kind of clauses being shoehorned in terms and conditions? I can’t make you sell your soul for subscribing to a service.
- dagav 7y agoI don't think that's enforceable. You'd need some kind of soul extracting machine, or a soul-over-IP transfer mechanism. Maybe a soul mail-in option. You'd also need to implement some kind of soul storage warehouse. What would you do with all those souls anyway?
- magashna 7y agoSell them to shady executives.
- jagged-chisel 7y agoThe technical feasibility of soul extraction and storage isn't really the problem. It's the act of selling it that's the problem. I mean, we don't 'extract' and 'store' land/real estate, but we do buy and sell it. You can have a claim to land and not need to move it to your warehouse. Just a title/deed system for souls would suffice. Since there's not a legal framework around the ownership of souls, I'm sure we could encourage its creation by starting a marketplace. Ultimately, however, I suspect 'soul' will finally be defined as "existing, being, with current human perceptions of free will" or somesuch and we will no longer have the ability to sell our souls for the licensing benefits of a product or service.
- dagav 7y agoWhat rights does owning someone's soul give me over that person? If I sold my soul to the devil, he would have me for an eternity in Hell after I die. However the devil is an eternal being, and human law only applies to mortals. I have to assume that ownership of a soul is revoked after the death of that soul, since human authority is transcended by a higher body of power. If I sold my soul to Mark Zuckerberg, what would he do with that power over my mortal life?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ckastner 7y agoUnder article 7 GDPR [1], consent has to be given freely. Unless Facebook offered an option to opt-out of this contract, use of the Facebook service was tied to the agreement, which means it probably won't hold up. It's great that this is happening in front of an Austrian court, because the Austrian Data Protection Agency already has ruled on consent issues, and in those rulings was (IMO) extremely strict on when consent was given freely. In one ToS challenge, the mere potential for confusion was enough to render it invalid. Edit: Here's one such ruling [2]. Co-mingling checkboxes for processing of data for marketing purposes with actual contractual clauses was ruled as a violation of the GDPR, even though by default, the checkboxes were unchecked. The Agency ruled that the confusing nature of the form could lead subjects to believe that they had to check a checkbox to receive the service. Also, another relevant local case would be with a popular national newspaper, DerStandard.at. That newspaper offers access in two ways: either (a) you pay for a subscription and receive the service ad-free, or (b) you access the service for free, but consent to receiving ads. This was deemed in compliance with the GDPR, but it was stated that only offering (b) -- ie, exactly what Facebook does -- would not hold up. [1] https://gdpr-info.eu/art-7-gdpr/ https://gdpr-info.eu/art-7-gdpr/ [2] https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/Dokumente/Dsk/DSBT_20180731_DSB_D213_642_0002_DSB_2018_00/DSBT_20180731_DSB_D213_642_0002_DSB_2018_00.html https://www.ris.bka.gv.at/Dokumente/Dsk/DSBT_20180731_DSB_D2...
- A_No_Name_Mouse 7y agoThe trick is that the legal ground is not based on consent but on performance of a contract, in which case consent, freely given or not, is not required at all.
- Havoc 7y agoCongrats on finding a way to circumvent the letter of the law. Think they're about to have an harsh encounter with spirit of the law & European thinking about privacy & consent though.
- buboard 7y agofacebook is probably laughing harder at this. A few billion in fines, combined with low irish taxation is still not big enough to justify pulling out of the EU market. The EU decided a bit too late to build a chinese-style 'firewall' around european tech and it's not really working. Instead they are playing cat and mouse with big corp, which really shows that these laws were mainly meant to have an apotropaeic effect
- buboard 7y agowhile they may have a point their arguments are not well articulated > Europe’s strict privacy laws actually it's EU's privacy regulation > Facebook openly admitted that it has been collecting and processing data without users’ consent They said that they ve been collecting WITH consent, at least with their definition of consent > To prove that no one ordered advertising from Facebook, we conducted a neutral study by the Austrian Gallup Institute. The result is devastating for Facebook: Only 4% of users want advertising, ... And i bet only 4% want to pay taxes too. polls are not legal documents. Also, "wanted advertising" is very different from "accepted advertising as part of the terms" > Facebook does not give users a full copy of all their data I believe facebook does give all their personal data,but maybe they are looking for derived data that facebook has stored for them? that's not personal data and it can be particularly tricky if it has been combined with other people's data , for example to train a neural net In any case, i don't think facebook cares too much anymore and will just pay another yearly fine for operating in the EU. Even if FB asks for consent in every second page, people will click yes.
- sgift 7y ago> In any case, i don't think facebook cares too much anymore and will just pay another yearly fine for operating in the EU. Time to push the amounts up. 2% of worldwide annual revenue per infraction (e.g. per user) should start to add up after a while.
- twobat 7y agoAs an user I feel that GDPR changed nothing. Google, Facebook and whatever else tracks you to the bones did not change one bit (for me). As a sys-admin, GDPR invented all sorts of jobs. Jobs well intended. But these jobs are filled by people that are neither lawyers nor IT people. Whenever I interact with them I feel like they just want to check some boxes that makes the org compliant and go home. They don't enforce or apply GDPR, they enforce those checkboxes. * all of the above in my limited experience.
- tcd 7y agoThe GDPR is a failure anyway. US tech giants are still globbling up masses of data even if the individual hasn't consented. For example, the "contacts" permission should be disabled on OS's in the EU as it's impossible to prove the user has constend to sharing that information, yet Google launches an API in chrome to access the users contacts which totally won't be abused. Alternatively you can gobble up data and "accidentally leak" it through an open MongoDB or AWS instance, will anyone go to jail? Unlikely, nobody really cares. I doubt Facebook is going to change its ways any time soon, they're simply too big to fail at this point
- mpweiher 7y agoGDPR enforcement is just beginning. The cases again the big guys have started to be made, but haven't actually made it yet. When they do, things will get interesting...right now we're in limbo...or more precisely in a Wile E. Coyote moment. I am keeping my popcorn ready.
- stiray 7y agoI don't think anyone of us has seen consent request by facebook or google in this form (freely given != 'give consent or you can't use or services, specific/informed/unambiguous != barried in miles of legal giberish,...): Recital 32 EU GDPR (32) Consent should be given by a clear affirmative act establishing a freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject's agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her, such as by a written statement, including by electronic means, or an oral statement. This could include ticking a box when visiting an internet website, choosing technical settings for information society services or another statement or conduct which clearly indicates in this context the data subject's acceptance of the proposed processing of his or her personal data. Silence, pre-ticked boxes or inactivity should not therefore constitute consent. Consent should cover all processing activities carried out for the same purpose or purposes. When the processing has multiple purposes, consent should be given for all of them. If the data subject's consent is to be given following a request by electronic means, the request must be clear, concise and not unnecessarily disruptive to the use of the service for which it is provided.
- hgjbhujxgjbv 7y agoBut this is really strange, news like this with 186 pts atm is on 3rd page. Before it are news with 2pts. This doesnt make any sense. Is it a coverup by HN administration?
- usr1106 7y agoI would not shout coverup. But that's the problem of closed source rating algorithms https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21544537 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21544537 (not suggesting that HN would use contractors and blacklists, but generally the discussion about the black magic happening)
- mpweiher 7y agoAll it takes is a few people to flag the article.