[rock_hard]

I 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

[xg15]

IMO, ads should be made illegal, but that's not the point here. Facebook is perfectly free to show ads to people, they are just not free to track people. They are trying to use ads as a justification for tracking here, which is the contested point.

And before you answer that ads without tracking don't pay the bills, that's honestly Facebook's problem.

[Notorious_BLT]

Every time I start thinking about ads being made illegal, I think about the small businesses who don't already have their brand established. Banning advertising entirely would crush many entrpreneurs for whom advertising is the only reason anyone knows who they are.

There's a big difference between massive companies seeking to keep their brand in your mind and small businesses trying to let you know they even exist.

But how do you ban one without banning both? Its a complicated issue

[bduerst]

The need for advertising arises from having substitute goods on imperfect markets.

If consumers knew the perfect good or service that they wanted to buy and exactly whom to buy it from, there wouldn't be a need for advertising. As it is now, information asymmetry creates a demand for advertising, so until people know everything about every market, you're going to have ads.

[cmcd]

The alternative to ads is subscription services, which already exist. If people prefered subscription social media to ad based they would flock to those, but they don't.

[riversflow]

“The alternative to indentured servitude is free labor, which already exists. If people preferred free labor to indentured service, no one would sign a service contract, but they do.”

-paraphrasing someone 300 years ago, probably.

Sometimes people pick things that are bad; that people choose something doesn’t make it somehow good.

[cmcd]

Pretty extreme to compare FaceBook to indentured servitude, everyone is free to leave FaceBook at any time and we know up front what their model is.

[riversflow]

Seems apt to me. Indentured servitude actually seemed reasonable to a lot of people looking to move, you got expensive passage on a ship in exchange for working for a set length of time. Facebook is a platform for social manipulation, in a few hundred years I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we see that social manipulation as a morally intolerable evil. The sort of tracking/aggregating they do is a violation of privacy as extreme as indentured service is on free will.

[e_proxus]

An analogy is not a comparison. I think an analogy here was made to reinforce the point made, not to in any way claim that Facebook somehow deals with indentured servitude.

[strbean]

Por que no los dos? Sign up for Hulu today! Pay a subscription fee and still get the benefit of tons of ads! Or pay more for our Hulu (No Ads) offering, which still has ads on certain programs.

[ckrailo]

I'm surprised that FB after all these years hasn't offered something as simple as a paid upgrade for removing ads and maybe better photo storage or something.

Maybe that lack of long-term feature is endemic to the capitalist system/environment, because decade-long growth usually isn't allowed to sacrifice short-term growth. I couldn't imagine a private company like Valve Software making the same decisions.

[thenewnewguy]

It'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]

Just 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.

[pwinnski]

If generic ads can't fund FB, that's FB's problem.

FB does not have some sort of right-to-exist. Beyond that, if FB goes out of business completely, the world is arguably improved.

[bduerst]

No, that is the users problem. The users determine if FB has the right to exist, as no one is arguing that any corporate entity simply has the right to exist.

I haven't used FB in years, but even I know that if FB didn't exist that another service would fill the gap in the market. The problem is FB plays fast and loose with privacy and security, which should be the focus of criticism for FB, since that negatively affects users. If FB didn't exist, you still run the risk of another player making the exact same mistakes.

[thenewnewguy]

> as no one is arguing that any corporate entity simply has the right to exist

Yes, but I do still see people give the "just don't use FaceBook then" argument on every post about this on HN, as if we should just ignore all the problems. Under this insane framework any horrible behavior by a company towards their customers is justified as long as you use their products willingly.

This also ignores the massive existing adoption FaceBook has. If I want to switch to twitter or mastodon or $otherSocialNetwork I have to convince everyone I communicate with on FaceBook to switch too.

[bduerst]

The problem here isn't Facebook (even though it certainly has problems), it's that your preferences do not align with the majority of FB's existing users' preferences for social networks. That's my point - the users dictate what exists on the market, and entrants like Snapchat and TikTok show that it is possible for new social networks to attract users off of Facebook.

[pwinnski]

Regardless of user demand, many businesses and business models are still illegal by popular acclaim.

User demand is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a business to exist.

[bduerst]

Such as?

Existing legality is not necessarily a good cause to dictate if a business should exist or not, as for some markets the law tends to lag society (i.e. federal law and weed dispensaries). This discussion isn't really about legality anyways, it's about market demand.

[e_proxus]

In this case, you could argue that the "users" is almost equivalent to the people (of EU), because of how widespread the usage of Facebook is. What we see here is that the people is starting to decide that some things that Facebook are doing are not acceptable anymore.

[strbean]

But my company depends on torturing puppies! Your anti-puppy-torture legislation will put me out of business!

[kevlawrence]

> I doubt generic ads would fund the site as it stands today.

Maybe that’s ok.

[alkonaut]

The 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]

If that's actually true, then Facebook is an inherently immoral service that shouldn't exist.

[xg15]

To my knowledge no one asked them to be free.

[JohnFen]

> I don’t understand what’s so hard to understand about the fact that ads is what pays for Facebook to exist?

It's not hard to understand. Everybody knows this is the case. But that excuses nothing.

Also, it's only the case because that's the business model Facebook chose. They could choose a different one.

> You get free access and get to see ads in exchange.

I love how you say that as if it's the ads that are the major issue (it's not, it's the tracking), and as if seeing ads is some sort of benefit.

> If the problem people have is ads

Again, the problem isn't the ads, it's the spying.

[alkonaut]

I don’t mind ads. I mind tracking. Basically my demand is that Facebook show me dumb enough ads and use only data I consent to. Im ok with my age and gender and other things being used to target an ad - that’s information I already willingly gave them. But if they show me an ad based on a page I visited with a Facebook script snippet on it, a message about sneakers I sent to a friend, or a post I liked on Instagram they crossed a line regardless of what terms and conditions I accepted.

If ads that work without spying on users don’t pay enough to pay their data center bills then they should shut them down. I’m more than happy to vote for politicians that ensure this. I’m not comfortable saying “I’ll just not use services from companies X and Y because they use shady ads”.

[wcarron]

> But if they show me an ad based on a page I visited with a Facebook script snippet on it, a message about sneakers I sent to a friend, or a post I liked on Instagram they crossed a line regardless of what terms and conditions I accepted.

Uh, no, they haven't. YOU are responsible for visiting websites and using their services under terms and conditions you agreed to. YOU are responsible for and capable of not using sites do not agree with. You are getting a service in exchange for being tracked and shown ads. If you don't like it, delete your account, or fix your damn /etc/hosts file to block the (admittedly overwhelming) number of domains FB uses for these purposes.

I'm no fan of Fb. I deleted my account, blocked thousands of domains in my /etc/hosts file, use multiple ad-blockers, etc. etc. Fuckerberg going to prison would make me giddy. But, you don't get to have your mystical cake and eat it, too. You don't dictate how they run, or what data they collect, or how they use it. Get real, dude. Take responsibility for your actions. You agreed to what they do when you read(skipped) the terms of service/privacy policy when you signed up.

[JohnFen]

This argument would carry more weight if the terms of service and privacy policies were both complete and written in a way that ordinary non-lawyer people could actually understand.

However, 90+% of the time, they're not.

[wcarron]

Eh, if I sign up for a credit card for "0% APR!!!" and then don't read the fine print that it's an introductory offer, isn't that a result of my action (or lack thereof)?

That they use fine print or dense legalese doesn't invalidate the fact that it was there for the end-user to read and agree or disagree with. I find that most "ordinary non-lawyer" people can understand these policies if they take the time to actually read them. They're verbose, not arcane.

[JohnFen]

> I find that most "ordinary non-lawyer" people can understand these policies if they take the time to actually read them.

I find exactly the opposite.

> They're verbose, not arcane.

They're both.

The problem is that people aren't lawyers and don't read them with a lawyer's eye. This frequently leads people to think that the terms are saying things that they aren't saying (by design). People tend to think that these policies are more favorable to the user than they actually are.

[alkonaut]

> You don’t dictate how they run

Isn’t that what I did when my elected representatives pushed GDPR through though?

The reason there are so few successful services with sensible advertising is simple: it’s too easy to fool people to accepting terrible ads that pay more.

I don’t think users should be expected to know how to edit their hosts file to preserve their integrity. Nor do I think they can be expected to read the ToS (get real).

I want regulation to ensure that idiots cannot agree to ToS that endanger their information or integrity. The GDPR and similar laws, if properly enforced, goes a long way towards that. I especially like the idea that access to the service can’t be conditioned on data collection.

[wcarron]

> I don’t think users should be expected to know how to edit their hosts file to preserve their integrity.

Ok, that's fair.

> Nor do I think they can be expected to read the ToS (get real).

I am being real. ToS and Privacy Policies can be, and often are, legally binding. Do I expect people to read them? No. Are they legally subject to whatever they agreed to, regardless of whether or not they actually read it? Yes. The user agreed to the contact. They clicked the damn button. They can deal with the consequences of their haste and/or stupidity.

> I want regulation to ensure that idiots cannot agree to ToS that endanger their information or integrity.

That's a bit different than what your originally wrote, which seemed to be less like a desire for regulation to address this and more like a a desire for a new ToS between FB and you, a singular end-user.

FWIW, I'm also a proponent of the GDPR and CCPA. But I also don't think people can just scot-free break or circumvent contacts they agreed to. Where is the personal accountability for the user? It can't just _not_ exist.

[Hamuko]

>I don’t understand what’s so hard to understand about the fact that ads is what pays for Facebook to exist?

I think most people understand that ads pay for Facebook. But so what? I don't see how it changes anything.

[buboard]

the claim is that they users didn't want to see ads even though they agreed to use the site, so they couldn't have known that ads are required for the site to exist

[ivanbakel]

The article is not against ads generally, but instead Facebook's attempt to circumvent GDPR to continue showing personalised ads.

GDPR should be used for exactly this purpose - it is a protection against companies collecting and using personal data in this way. Facebook has the choice to show ads, just not personalised ones. What is specifically being argued about is that Facebook tried to claim ads were a contractual service (thus exempting them from rules on personal data) - but transparently they aren't.

And if Facebook can't survive in a future where it is forced to respect personal privacy, then may its death be ever sooner.

[lokar]

And if FB is not feasible without personalized ads, no user should be allowed to make that choice for themselves?

[ivanbakel]

That would be called consent, which is exactly what FB is not collecting.

[pwinnski]

If an illegal operation exists, should users be allowed to make that choice for themselves?

User choice has no bearing on the issue. The activity is either legal or not, and it should not be legal.

[weinzierl]

> The article is not against ads generally, but instead Facebook's attempt to circumvent GDPR to continue showing personalised ads.

And yet Facebook is not alone doing this. While almost all the medium and small sized sites ask for consent nowadays the big players just seem to be immune. My go to example is spiegel.de which is one of Germany's largest newspapers. Full of trackers, full of personalized ads and I have never seen them asking for my consent.

[sigwinch28]

The issue is not advertising, but "to aggregate user interests and track people on the internet".

While advertising is not illegal under the GDPR, collecting an individual's data for marketing or advertising purposes without a "basis" (as defined in the GDPR) is.

The plaintiff is arguing about data privacy, whereas Facebook's lawyer is playing the advertising card as a counter. The plaintiff is unhappy about the way Facebook uses personal data, while Facebook is arguing they have a legal basis for processing data for personalised advertising purposes in order to fulfil a contract which it entered into the users. (which is a basis in the GDPR).

[kevlawrence]

If they lose this case, do you think it would it leave Facebook a liability for no longer being able to fulfill that contract? I.e. you can’t share my data, now where are my personalized ads that you promised?

[sigwinch28]

IANAL, but I think that clause would become null and void.

User: "hey Facebook where's the personalised ads you promised me?" Facebook: "that clause was found to be illegal, and we have notified you that it is unenforceable by either party."

[Hamuko]

The issue here isn't just the fact that there are personalised ads, it's that Facebook wants to serve personalised ads without consent.

[kevlawrence]

Right, and Facebook is arguing that it’s because they have to fulfill a contract. However, GDPR may block them from collecting the data they need to serve personalized ads. This would mean they wouldn’t be able to fulfill the contract.

To phrase my question in another way, would that contract still need to be fulfilled, if they are blocked by GDPR from collecting the data they would need to fulfill it?

[PeterStuer]

The lobbies have been trying to reverse the controller/processor relation from the very start. They have been told time and time again this was not an acceptable interpretation of the GDPR. It's time one of them is made an example in court, with fines stiff enough to discourage any corp from trying this strategy again.