[buboard]

while 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.

[thierryzoller]

Your are funny, you say their arguments are not well articulated, yet you do seem not to be up to point.

You argue they are regulations? European Regulations are law. European Directives and Regulation are the two main legislative

They argue users are using facebook because they want advertising, their primary usage is advertising and for that advertisement they consent to share their data. That's so ridiculous it is funny.

And no, FB does not give all the data, the definition of what data is in the regulation.

Both FB and their Privacy Director are not looking good.

[buboard]

don't be insulting

> European Regulations are law.

Regulations have to be implemented and integrated into each country's laws. Countries may not have yet implemented GDPR

> their primary usage is advertising

I don't see where FB claimed that advertising is primary usage and others are secondary. i can infer from the text that they parceled as part of the "service promise"

> FB does not give all the data, the definition of what data

Facebook says they are GDPR compliant and i doubt they 'd say that without the consultation of at least one EU data authority (perhaps the irish?). https://www.facebook.com/business/gdpr

[Hamuko]

>Regulations have to be implemented and integrated into each country's laws. Countries may not have yet implemented GDPR

This is 100% wrong.

https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/law-making-process/types-eu-la...

[buboard]

Right, that's correct, even though supplemental legislation is passed in each country following the regulation, including GDPR. IIRC there are 2 EU members that haven't done it yet.

[hugi]

Facebook pretends to be GDPR compliant because they have to. Obviously, they're not. Try downloading your data. Try deleting your account. It's all really iffy.

Of course they'll say they're compliant. They have to to be able to operate. But they are not. They are operating illegally within the EU and they should be shut down.

[thierryzoller]

You are wrong again, Directives are ratified, Regulations apply verbatim. That said, the GDPR left some detail to each member state.

I am sorry buboard, I don't know whether you are affilated with FB, but that's not just how it works. They indeed, just claim it. That's why you pay for General Counsel.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

> actually it's EU's privacy regulation

The GDPR (which is not the only EU privacy law) is fairly described as a “law”, “regulation” is just the formal EU law term for a directly-applicable primary legislative act, which is a kind of law. If you're complaining about the “EU” part, well, the GDPR applies in some non-EU countries too (e.g. in the EEA).

> They said that they ve been collecting WITH consent, at least with their definition of consent

Some data is collected with ostensible consent, some without, and there's still processing to deal with.

> 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"

Sure, but the GDPR also means you can't forcibly bundle consents together. You need to separately consent to invasive use of data for advertising versus provision of the basic service.

> I believe facebook does give all their personal data

Did this recently change? I seem to recall that Facebook are known for not providing e.g. the data they've got from you browsing other sites with FB cookies unless you went via some difficult legal route.

[buboard]

> with ostensible consent, some without

details, but they are not claiming that data collection is without consent. they claim that they need a separate consent to use that data to show personalized ads

> you can't forcibly bundle consents together

Yeah that is true. still, making an online poll about what people want in general is a ridiculous way to nullify an agreed contract

> you browsing other sites with FB cookies

that would depend on whether these are personally identifying or personal data in general

[bad_user]

Also important to mention... serving ads without consent is not ilegal under GDPR, what is illegal is user profiling with the purpose of serving ads.

In practice for Facebook the attraction for their ads platform is precisely that you can target fine grained demographics. So I'm not sure if Facebook can do anything here without a drop in revenue.

[buboard]

if the court gives them another fine (probably yes), FB will probably become a paid service in europe, but then will pay you back with its "ad viewing" program so it can be free again. This would also be compatible with california's new regulations i think

[hiccuphippo]

Won't the regulators eventually patch the law so they can't use that exploit?

[sgift]

> So I'm not sure if Facebook can do anything here without a drop in revenue.

Probably not, but that's kind of the point: Some things may make you money, but we do not allow you to do them. Find another way to make money.

GDPR is not different from other laws forbidding lucrative, but scummy, things.

[hugi]

As an EU citizen I believe it's time we close Facebook off. They've shown no willingness to abide by our law so I don't see why a criminal entity should be allowed to continue operating here.

[hugi]

As an EU citizen I believe it's time we shut Facebook off. They've shown no willingness to abide by our law, so I don't see why a criminal company should be allowed to continue to operate here.

[Swenrekcah]

I certainly won’t miss them. My biggest concern isn’t even the data privacy issue, but the way they have effectively killed most discussion forums which were actually designed to make communicating clear and effective, as opposed to the unsearchable stream hell of facebook groups.

[buboard]

we could switch to VK. try it, it's fast, and has a ton of pirated movies.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Yeah, and a comrade major from the FSB has easy and unlimited access to all your conversations and data

A vast majority of political prosecutions for online extremism in Russia were carried out using info that VK subserviently provided to police and special services.

[buboard]

yeah i was being ironic.

As for access, i assume there are server farms on quite a few countries looking for all kinds of patterns in chats. Until E2E encryption becomes extensively spread, it 's a joke to pretend there 's some kind of user privacy

[Andrew_nenakhov]

If you run your own XMPP server (can be done dirt cheap now), you don't really need e2ee and all the problems that come bundled with it.

[sgift]

> 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.

[buboard]

at worst, facebook will pull out of EU and close its irish HQ (but probably still be tracking users). Who won?

[chmod775]

> Who won?

Whichever European social network replaces them.

Facebook is a freak social network considering how long it has survived. People used to migrate every one to two years.

[buboard]

> Whichever European social network replaces them.

GDPR makes it very difficult to touch user's private data for commercial purposes. that's the whole business of a SN so this is kind of precluded

[Nextgrid]

Facebook has huge overheads because most of their engineering time is spent on all the creepy privacy violating things they develop and the infrastructure to run them.

If we start from scratch without all that it would be possible to make a profitable social network for a couple of bucks per month per user (or a tiered system, so heavy users or “influencers” would pay more while the base tier remains free).

[rorykoehler]

The current social network business model was an innovation. Development of a new business model can and will happen again.

[astrodev]

The European people, actually.

[oarabbus_]

Could you elaborate?

[bad_user]

I'm not the parent, but from my pov FB is a net negative for society, so if they are unwilling to play by our laws, then I'd rather see them get the fuck out.

They won't of course, because it leaves the market open for grabs.

[voxic11]

If they leave the EU though they don't need to follow European laws or pay European taxes, but that doesn't prevent European users from continuing to use the actual website.

[buboard]

i m a EU people. how would i win?

[pwinnski]

If that happens, Europeans win.

[oarabbus_]

Can you elaborate?