[hgasimov]

I don't think it would be that much effort for facebook to stop tracking Belgium or German users. They have excellent software engineers. If they followed the rule of "separation of concerns", only small percent of their codebase is responsible for tracking and they will need a chahge only in that part of the code.

[gerbilly]

> I don't think it would be that much effort for facebook to stop tracking Belgium or German users.

If that's the case, and facebook complies, then I think I'll start doing all my browsing through a VPN that exits in Belgium or Germany then.

[renholder]

>I don't think it would be that much effort for facebook to stop tracking Belgium or German users.

On the flipside of that very same coin, <insert three-lettered agency here> claims that it is difficult to discern between who's an American citizens and who's not, so they just deal with it "honestly", afterwards (even though the DOJ has found them to be breaching the 4th numerous times).

I think we've reached a stage where compulsion, through punitive fines, is the only viable means to make these entities respect the boundaries that have been erected.

It might not be much effort to create the infrastructure to delimit their tracking (in both cases) but they have a much higher ROI for not doing so, currently, than actually doing so (if that makes sense).

[pdimitar]

Yours is a very generous assumption, having in mind that Facebook preferred to take over, improve and upgrade PHP, compared to moving away from PHP.

I'd think the code that serves your core business needs and brings in the real money is very conservatively managed -- and judging by the circumstantial evidence we have, I believe that's exactly the case for them.