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Laws don't change in a matter of one or two days. So if they did this shutdown with the argument being that they otherwise can't offer their service in a legal

Laws don't change in a matter of one or two days. So if they did this shutdown with the argument being that they otherwise can't offer their service in a legal way, it would have to be a permanent shutdown (or at least on a scale of several months, until the law is changed), because everything else would effectively result in openly admitting that they are knowingly running an illegal service. If that happens, how long do you think it will take a bunch of companies to spin up replacements for Facebook? It's not exactly rocket science to create a social network application; most of the value of Facebook also does not lie in the platforms' code, but in the network effects that it managed to create. Thus, there would be a timeframe in which a huge number of new social networks would try to win over a critical amount of users, with one of them eventually emerging as the dominant one. As soon as that happened, Facebook would have quite a big problem in case they ever wanted to re-enter the European market, as it would suddenly have to compete with a big network with serious network effects keeping their users from re-joining Facebook, even if that was suddenly possible again. They would probably decide to shill out the largest sum of money ever to simply buy up this competitor, because otherwise there would be a certain risk of the new competitor eventually winning the global race for the dominant network (I assume that due to network effects there will always be a clear gravitation towards a single global general-purpose social network, as long as access to this network is not purposely blocked), and no matter how low this risk is, Facebook would most likely try to eliminate it (remember the large sums they paid to buy up possible dangers in the past). Other commenters already compared the situation with China; I think that is a pretty good comparison, just that the whole development/transition phase would happen much faster, now that it is pretty well known how the final product would have to look like to be accepted by the user.

Silhouette 9y ago
Laws don't change in a matter of one or two days. True enough, but assuming they decided to pull the stunt before the new laws came into effect, which isn't until the middle of next year, the real question is whether public opinion could be shifted in so little time. In most cases, I'd say that was extremely optimistic. However, in this case we're talking about a service used by probably a large majority of voters across Europe, often for considerable time every day and for communications and arrangements that matter to them personally. "If they don't change this, you'll lose Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp" is sure to get some people's attention, and all of those services going dark would probably make the front page of major news outlets. There would certainly be a lot of discussion; in fact, it might be a doubly effective move, because a lot of people would immediately then realise that without those services their main ways of telling their friends about something wasn't working. If that happens, how long do you think it will take a bunch of companies to spin up replacements for Facebook? [...] Thus, there would be a timeframe in which a huge number of new social networks would try to win over a critical amount of users, with one of them eventually emerging as the dominant one. I'm not sure that's how things would play out, if Facebook really did go offline permanently in Europe because of this. It would take vast resources to operate a social network on the scale of Facebook, but more importantly, before you could even start, the first thing you'd have to do is figure out how to comply with the same EU data protection rules and presumably then you'd also have to convince some serious investors that you could do it. If Facebook had already failed in that -- because obviously Facebook isn't just going to surrender the entire EU market and all its advertising revenue without a very good reason -- then why would we expect any new social network without all of Facebook's advantages to be able to comply if it was otherwise operating on the same basis, i.e., free to use but ad-supported?
- Slartie 9y ago
  > True enough, but assuming they decided to pull the stunt before the new laws came into effect, which isn't until the middle of next year, the real question is whether public opinion could be shifted in so little time. Interesting idea. I did not think about this, mostly probably because I would never do this if I was Facebook because there is a very real risk of it back-firing. Many people here (I'm living in Germany), especially among the politically active, are in a kind of love-hate relationship with Facebook, and a clear attempt of blackmailing an entire continents' population in order to force political action in favor of an absurdly rich, multinational corporation could very well kill off whatever positive attitude there is towards Facebook in particular. As of competition having to comply with the privacy law: of course it would have to. But I also assume that this is not impossible at all, it is just inconvenient and costly, especially if you have a huge legacy system built under the assumption that you can do practically everything with the data of your users. If you design your system in compliance with the data protection law in the first place, this gets considerably easier. Money would not be a problem at all: there are more than enough investors in Europe who would love to throw money at an attempt to create a second multi-billion-dollar money-printing machine in a market that is currently assumed to have a very high barrier of entry (but exactly that would change if Facebook gave up on Europe). I also assume that it will not be impossible at all for Facebook to comply with these regulations, just pretty inconvenient. Under this assumption, any refusal to comply must automatically be motivated by a desire to maximize profits and minimize political influence on the platform, not by a sheer struggle for survival. Facebook's PR department might try to spin this into a different story, however...
  - Silhouette 9y ago
    I also assume that it will not be impossible at all for Facebook to comply with these regulations, just pretty inconvenient. This is a common assumption, and it might prove to be correct, but I'm unwilling to accept it as axiomatic. Fundamentally, just looking at the right of a data subject to withdraw consent, it would mean Facebook needed to track every piece of data that could conceivably be tied back to an identifiable person throughout its entire organisation. That's not just their status updates or that time a friend tagged them in a photo. It's every photo in Facebook's entire database that ever included a recognisable image of them, tagged or not. It's every line in a log file that was saved by an engineer investigating a server glitch that relates to any activity that user took. It's everyone who uploads their contacts to find friends and has one of those data subjects in their contact list. Now, I'm not saying I think Facebook should necessarily be able to do all of the above. In particular, I have often questioned their hoarding of data from things like contact details and photos that will inevitably include other people who may not have chosen to use Facebook or give their consent. But I am questioning whether it is practically viable, even for an organisation with Facebook's scale and resources, to follow the letter of this law and still operate at all while continuing to provide similar services, if a few people decide to make a point and explicitly deny consent to hold any data about them, even if such data was supplied by other people. There are practical, ethical and legal issues here about third parties and automated systems that we have barely begun to explore, and we're talking about them at a scale where businesses like Facebook and Google have already had to invent new techniques and strategies for organising data just to cope with what they already do. None of this has even touched yet on whether Facebook would still have a viable commercial model if users have a right to opt out of processing their data for purposes such as advertising but Facebook isn't allowed to deny them service in return, which is another interpretation I've seen talked about a lot (on the basis that an opt-out that stops you using something independent as well isn't a true opt-out and so wouldn't count). So far, I haven't studied the GDPR and informed reviews of it enough to reach any firm conclusions or opinions on that side of things, but again there are surely issues about the obligations of an organisation that offers a useful service but relies on advertising to fund it that go far deeper than just Facebook and the GDPR that haven't really been explored up to this point. As surprising as it may seem given my comments in this discussion, I'm actually a pretty firm believer in stronger privacy rights and a confirmed sceptic when it comes to the big data hoarders like Facebook and Google. But I'm also someone who runs businesses and has first-hand experience of what happens when the EU's non-technical legislators meddle in technical issues they don't fully understand, often missing even the blindingly obvious consequences, never mind the more subtle and/or long-term implications. So I don't think we should dive into changes like this without considerable thought, and contrary to what various officials from the EU and the national data protection authorities like to say, I don't believe for a moment that this sort of change is a small, incremental development of the existing privacy frameworks we already operate under.

Silhouette 9y ago

Laws don't change in a matter of one or two days. True enough, but assuming they decided to pull the stunt before the new laws came into effect, which isn't until the middle of next year, the real question is whether public opinion could be shifted in so little time. In most cases, I'd say that was extremely optimistic. However, in this case we're talking about a service used by probably a large majority of voters across Europe, often for considerable time every day and for communications and arrangements that matter to them personally. "If they don't change this, you'll lose Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp" is sure to get some people's attention, and all of those services going dark would probably make the front page of major news outlets. There would certainly be a lot of discussion; in fact, it might be a doubly effective move, because a lot of people would immediately then realise that without those services their main ways of telling their friends about something wasn't working. If that happens, how long do you think it will take a bunch of companies to spin up replacements for Facebook? [...] Thus, there would be a timeframe in which a huge number of new social networks would try to win over a critical amount of users, with one of them eventually emerging as the dominant one. I'm not sure that's how things would play out, if Facebook really did go offline permanently in Europe because of this. It would take vast resources to operate a social network on the scale of Facebook, but more importantly, before you could even start, the first thing you'd have to do is figure out how to comply with the same EU data protection rules and presumably then you'd also have to convince some serious investors that you could do it. If Facebook had already failed in that -- because obviously Facebook isn't just going to surrender the entire EU market and all its advertising revenue without a very good reason -- then why would we expect any new social network without all of Facebook's advantages to be able to comply if it was otherwise operating on the same basis, i.e., free to use but ad-supported?

Slartie 9y ago
> True enough, but assuming they decided to pull the stunt before the new laws came into effect, which isn't until the middle of next year, the real question is whether public opinion could be shifted in so little time. Interesting idea. I did not think about this, mostly probably because I would never do this if I was Facebook because there is a very real risk of it back-firing. Many people here (I'm living in Germany), especially among the politically active, are in a kind of love-hate relationship with Facebook, and a clear attempt of blackmailing an entire continents' population in order to force political action in favor of an absurdly rich, multinational corporation could very well kill off whatever positive attitude there is towards Facebook in particular. As of competition having to comply with the privacy law: of course it would have to. But I also assume that this is not impossible at all, it is just inconvenient and costly, especially if you have a huge legacy system built under the assumption that you can do practically everything with the data of your users. If you design your system in compliance with the data protection law in the first place, this gets considerably easier. Money would not be a problem at all: there are more than enough investors in Europe who would love to throw money at an attempt to create a second multi-billion-dollar money-printing machine in a market that is currently assumed to have a very high barrier of entry (but exactly that would change if Facebook gave up on Europe). I also assume that it will not be impossible at all for Facebook to comply with these regulations, just pretty inconvenient. Under this assumption, any refusal to comply must automatically be motivated by a desire to maximize profits and minimize political influence on the platform, not by a sheer struggle for survival. Facebook's PR department might try to spin this into a different story, however...
- Silhouette 9y ago
  I also assume that it will not be impossible at all for Facebook to comply with these regulations, just pretty inconvenient. This is a common assumption, and it might prove to be correct, but I'm unwilling to accept it as axiomatic. Fundamentally, just looking at the right of a data subject to withdraw consent, it would mean Facebook needed to track every piece of data that could conceivably be tied back to an identifiable person throughout its entire organisation. That's not just their status updates or that time a friend tagged them in a photo. It's every photo in Facebook's entire database that ever included a recognisable image of them, tagged or not. It's every line in a log file that was saved by an engineer investigating a server glitch that relates to any activity that user took. It's everyone who uploads their contacts to find friends and has one of those data subjects in their contact list. Now, I'm not saying I think Facebook should necessarily be able to do all of the above. In particular, I have often questioned their hoarding of data from things like contact details and photos that will inevitably include other people who may not have chosen to use Facebook or give their consent. But I am questioning whether it is practically viable, even for an organisation with Facebook's scale and resources, to follow the letter of this law and still operate at all while continuing to provide similar services, if a few people decide to make a point and explicitly deny consent to hold any data about them, even if such data was supplied by other people. There are practical, ethical and legal issues here about third parties and automated systems that we have barely begun to explore, and we're talking about them at a scale where businesses like Facebook and Google have already had to invent new techniques and strategies for organising data just to cope with what they already do. None of this has even touched yet on whether Facebook would still have a viable commercial model if users have a right to opt out of processing their data for purposes such as advertising but Facebook isn't allowed to deny them service in return, which is another interpretation I've seen talked about a lot (on the basis that an opt-out that stops you using something independent as well isn't a true opt-out and so wouldn't count). So far, I haven't studied the GDPR and informed reviews of it enough to reach any firm conclusions or opinions on that side of things, but again there are surely issues about the obligations of an organisation that offers a useful service but relies on advertising to fund it that go far deeper than just Facebook and the GDPR that haven't really been explored up to this point. As surprising as it may seem given my comments in this discussion, I'm actually a pretty firm believer in stronger privacy rights and a confirmed sceptic when it comes to the big data hoarders like Facebook and Google. But I'm also someone who runs businesses and has first-hand experience of what happens when the EU's non-technical legislators meddle in technical issues they don't fully understand, often missing even the blindingly obvious consequences, never mind the more subtle and/or long-term implications. So I don't think we should dive into changes like this without considerable thought, and contrary to what various officials from the EU and the national data protection authorities like to say, I don't believe for a moment that this sort of change is a small, incremental development of the existing privacy frameworks we already operate under.