16 ms·

>“The cookies and pixels we use are industry standard technologies and enable hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow their businesses and reach customers a

by fouc 9y ago

>“The cookies and pixels we use are industry standard technologies and enable hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow their businesses and reach customers across the EU,” said Facebook’s VP of public policy for EMEA If it is "industry standard", does that make it ethical?

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
rhizome 9y ago
It doesn't matter, since it doesn't even make it legal.
- mannykannot 9y ago
  As the unethical nature of the practice is an important argument for it being illegal, it is important that this self-serving nonsense is challenged wherever it shows up, and especially where it is not illegal.
- jsemrau 9y ago
  Stuff like this makes me so mad. 1. I don't have an account on Facebook. 2. Blocked Facebook domains via /etc/hosts 3. Use ghostery And despite all of these steps it feels like we are wasting our brightest minds to always be a step ahead in surveilling what the humans of this world are doing to exploit it for targeted advertising.
  - TAForObvReasons 9y ago
    Rest assured, many of the brightest minds are aware of Facebook's business models and incentives, and many of them predicted the current situation and rejected the company many years ago.
    - IntronExon 9y ago
      ...and promptly took a job at a Google? Sorry, but someone is working for these companies, and they’re clearly bright enough to make the necessary tools. I’m sure some extremely bright and principled people refuse to work with anything like an Orwellian nightmare, but enough do to make up the difference.
      - simion314 9y ago
        Do you think that the code that tracks loggedin and not loggedin users differs much? I assume is the same tracking code, but if you are not loggedin FB and Google will give you an unique ID but after that they collect same data, they will need to add some code for merging data if they find that 2 different IDs are the same person. I am not defending FB, my point is that you do not need an army of geniuses to extend the tracking to everyone.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - oh_sigh 9y ago
    Perhaps there should be a central clearinghouse for people who don't want to be tracked by certain sites. How can you tell facebook to not track you without a facebook account? The best you can do is block various known IPs or other patterns which are bound to change over time.
    - volgo 9y ago
      >How can you tell facebook to not track you without a facebook account? That's the wrong question to ask. You shouldn't have to tell it not to track you. That shouldn't be able to do it, unless you explicitly tell them "hey you can track me."
      - tachyoff 9y ago
        Precisely. The Overton window for this topic seems to have shifted pretty far. The default position should be one of positive consent and assumed privacy. But then again, I think it’s all moot considering that Facebook’s existence is predicated on them collecting data. Asking them to do less of it is like asking a plant to stop photosynthesizing. That is to say: it’s their whole raison d’être, which means they won’t change it without a little encouragement from third parties.
      - unclebucknasty 9y ago
        If only. That battle seems to have been lost long ago, at least in the U.S. Google, Criteo and other have long had a default opt-in policy for their retargeting products, etc.
      - oh_sigh 9y ago
        You're the one in control of your browser. You know it's side effects when you load pages.
        A_No_Name_Mouse 9y ago
        Internet had become an integral part of everyday life. This is like saying air pollution is not a problem, just don't breathe all the time. Or is my sarcasm sensor not working this morning?
  - matthewaveryusa 9y ago
    If you apply your mind doing something evil you're evil and no amount of brilliance can justify it. The visceral example I like to use is: I admire efficiency and leaders, hitler was efficient and a leader, yet I don't admire hitler.
  - feelin_googley 9y ago
    This comment suggests Facebooks ability to "grow their business" via third-party hosted beacons, etc. relies on users not editing their /etc/hosts files. (or on not changing the DNS settings on their mobile device to use a nameserver that blocks Facebook domains) How much "brightness" is required to carry out such a strategy? If millions of users followed step 2 (or blocked Facebook domains through another means), what would happen? How would the "brightest minds" respond?
derefr 9y ago
I think the implication is more, "why are you only paying attention to us? If you think this is a bad practice, then you should be going after our competitors, too." Corporations tend not to mind if you take away a business strategy of theirs, as long as you take it away from everybody else at the same time. If you only take it away from one corporation, that corporation will be temporarily outcompeted by the corporations you haven't yet taken the business strategy away from, so they heavily resist that.
- scotty79 9y ago
  Actually it sounds more like an excuse. "Why have you singled us out for dumping 1000 tonnes of ash into environment each day? Look, this guy is dumping his ashtray on the grass right now!"
- mannykannot 9y ago
  > Corporations tend not to mind if you take away a business strategy of theirs, as long as you take it away from everybody else at the same time. Not so if it is the only way for the business model to be profitable. More generally, this argument assumes that there is a fixed profit to the business, and the only thing to compete for is a bigger share of that fixed profit. The reality is that corporations are amenable to increasing the profit all around so long as they get part of it, and don't particularly care who gets exploited in the process. Conversely, they do tend to protest when the pool is reduced, even if it affects their competitors similarly.
- chii 9y ago
  nobody likes to be made an example of. However, regulators like to make examples of bigger corporations since the publicity is more effective with them, and also they are able to both pay up and/or change.
  - seanmcdirmid 9y ago
    Fair application of regulations is essential to rule of law. Going after one company for a common practice but not others is simply the more tyrannical rule by law.
FridgeSeal 9y ago
> if it is "industry standard", does that make it ethical Nope, not at all. Standard practice does not override ethics. Tobacco companies would consider advertising and promoting smoking as industry practice, but we cracked down down on that because encouraging people to do something that is demonstrably bad for their health was something we decided wasn't ethical and would be cracked down on.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
adamnemecek 9y ago
" thousands of businesses to grow their businesses and reach customers across the EU" EU doesn't care about this. Like this argument works only in the US.
onetimemanytime 9y ago
If it is "industry standard", does that make it ethical? Industry here is essentially Google and Facebook. The other "players" fight for the crumbs. Ethical? They need growth, every quarter.
dennisgorelik 9y ago
> ethical? Yes, tracking cookies is ethical. If some internet users do not want to get tracked - they can run their browser in Incognito Mode.
- wruza 9y ago
  This is inconvenient and disables other functionality.
- lostlogin 9y ago
  Opt out crap used to be physically mailed to people until it was made illegal. It’s a new version for the same gross behaviour.
unclebucknasty 9y ago
>enable hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow their businesses Seems innocuous enough until you really think about what they're saying. "But, tracking these people without their consent allows companies, including us, to make money off of them". That's actually a pretty brazen thing to say; as if the fact that people can be monetized should trump their right to privacy.
- andrepd 9y ago
  This kind of corporate doublespeak never fails to raise my blood pressure.
dalbasal 9y ago
Besides being a weak argument in such a context, it's disingenious. FB set the industry standard. Maybe half the standard along with Google. FB's system is much more reliant on tracking though. Google's can at least work anonymously, eg searched 'dentists' in some area. FB's is almost useless without tracking.
zaarn 9y ago
It's totally okay when somebody else is doing it too. A bit like when you wait for the green light to walk over the street; if you see someone walking the red light, you walk it too. Of course you still get flattened by a semi-truck doing 50 kph.
gsich 9y ago
of course not I also don't see any advantage for the user, getting ads is not in their interest.
- TomMarius 9y ago
  It is, if having access to the site is in their interest. The site needs ads to survive, they are a form of payment.
  - xxs 9y ago
    ...or the site dies if ads are non-compliant. If there is some vacuum, it'd be filled by other monetization schemes.
    - TomMarius 9y ago
      What other monetization schemes? Noone is going to pay for access to a page with funny pictures, the site will cease to exist. Everything else will be behind a paywall and you call that an improvement? Up to this point in time, everyone had access to news, videos, science articles etc - for free. Those who didn't like being tracked had numerous options to avoid it. They also had the option to stop using these tracking sites. How is 13 year old poor kid going to read the news after everything is behind a paywall? How about a poor adult?
      - xxs 9y ago
        >Up to this point in time, everyone had access to news, videos, science articles etc - for free. I really don't like your definition of 'free'. wikipedia has been relying on donations for quite some time. guardian.co.uk is one of the recent examples asking for donations and working out for them. >science articles Ok that has to be a joke, the paywall journals subscriptions are nothing like ads. Please, don't conflate any pay method with pay wall (which is a pretty good one). If business cannot retain itself w/o breaking the law and has to shove unwanted images/videos/etc. straight in the face, it may as well not exist. The ads have degraded user experience in so bad ways that having a page with little content and 'next' button just to show more ads is pretty much the norm now.
qwerty456127 9y ago
It doesn't. And it is a mistake to take ethics for granted and think of it as a norm because the majority of people, including those who govern and implement businesses make unethical things every day. I hope this might change once but for today the only constructive strategy is to accept this fact and defend yourselves.
gregknicholson 9y ago
> to grow their businesses Very much not an excuse. It's up to the business to work out how to do this within the law. > and reach customers If I am not a Facebook user I am not your customer.
- jtbayly 9y ago
  It bears repeating that Facebook users aren’t their customers either. They are the product. It is even worse to be made into a product that FB sells when you aren’t even a FB user.
  - mykull 9y ago
    Tell that to credit agencies
quickben 9y ago
Standards, ethics and legality are unconnected.

by fouc 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

rhizome 9y ago

It doesn't matter, since it doesn't even make it legal.

mannykannot 9y ago
As the unethical nature of the practice is an important argument for it being illegal, it is important that this self-serving nonsense is challenged wherever it shows up, and especially where it is not illegal.
jsemrau 9y ago
Stuff like this makes me so mad. 1. I don't have an account on Facebook. 2. Blocked Facebook domains via /etc/hosts 3. Use ghostery And despite all of these steps it feels like we are wasting our brightest minds to always be a step ahead in surveilling what the humans of this world are doing to exploit it for targeted advertising.
- TAForObvReasons 9y ago
  Rest assured, many of the brightest minds are aware of Facebook's business models and incentives, and many of them predicted the current situation and rejected the company many years ago.
  - IntronExon 9y ago
    ...and promptly took a job at a Google? Sorry, but someone is working for these companies, and they’re clearly bright enough to make the necessary tools. I’m sure some extremely bright and principled people refuse to work with anything like an Orwellian nightmare, but enough do to make up the difference.
    - simion314 9y ago
      Do you think that the code that tracks loggedin and not loggedin users differs much? I assume is the same tracking code, but if you are not loggedin FB and Google will give you an unique ID but after that they collect same data, they will need to add some code for merging data if they find that 2 different IDs are the same person. I am not defending FB, my point is that you do not need an army of geniuses to extend the tracking to everyone.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- oh_sigh 9y ago
  Perhaps there should be a central clearinghouse for people who don't want to be tracked by certain sites. How can you tell facebook to not track you without a facebook account? The best you can do is block various known IPs or other patterns which are bound to change over time.
  - volgo 9y ago
    >How can you tell facebook to not track you without a facebook account? That's the wrong question to ask. You shouldn't have to tell it not to track you. That shouldn't be able to do it, unless you explicitly tell them "hey you can track me."
    - tachyoff 9y ago
      Precisely. The Overton window for this topic seems to have shifted pretty far. The default position should be one of positive consent and assumed privacy. But then again, I think it’s all moot considering that Facebook’s existence is predicated on them collecting data. Asking them to do less of it is like asking a plant to stop photosynthesizing. That is to say: it’s their whole raison d’être, which means they won’t change it without a little encouragement from third parties.
    - unclebucknasty 9y ago
      If only. That battle seems to have been lost long ago, at least in the U.S. Google, Criteo and other have long had a default opt-in policy for their retargeting products, etc.
    - oh_sigh 9y ago
      You're the one in control of your browser. You know it's side effects when you load pages.
      - A_No_Name_Mouse 9y ago
        Internet had become an integral part of everyday life. This is like saying air pollution is not a problem, just don't breathe all the time. Or is my sarcasm sensor not working this morning?
- matthewaveryusa 9y ago
  If you apply your mind doing something evil you're evil and no amount of brilliance can justify it. The visceral example I like to use is: I admire efficiency and leaders, hitler was efficient and a leader, yet I don't admire hitler.
- feelin_googley 9y ago
  This comment suggests Facebooks ability to "grow their business" via third-party hosted beacons, etc. relies on users not editing their /etc/hosts files. (or on not changing the DNS settings on their mobile device to use a nameserver that blocks Facebook domains) How much "brightness" is required to carry out such a strategy? If millions of users followed step 2 (or blocked Facebook domains through another means), what would happen? How would the "brightest minds" respond?

derefr 9y ago

I think the implication is more, "why are you only paying attention to us? If you think this is a bad practice, then you should be going after our competitors, too." Corporations tend not to mind if you take away a business strategy of theirs, as long as you take it away from everybody else at the same time. If you only take it away from one corporation, that corporation will be temporarily outcompeted by the corporations you haven't yet taken the business strategy away from, so they heavily resist that.

scotty79 9y ago
Actually it sounds more like an excuse. "Why have you singled us out for dumping 1000 tonnes of ash into environment each day? Look, this guy is dumping his ashtray on the grass right now!"
mannykannot 9y ago
> Corporations tend not to mind if you take away a business strategy of theirs, as long as you take it away from everybody else at the same time. Not so if it is the only way for the business model to be profitable. More generally, this argument assumes that there is a fixed profit to the business, and the only thing to compete for is a bigger share of that fixed profit. The reality is that corporations are amenable to increasing the profit all around so long as they get part of it, and don't particularly care who gets exploited in the process. Conversely, they do tend to protest when the pool is reduced, even if it affects their competitors similarly.
chii 9y ago
nobody likes to be made an example of. However, regulators like to make examples of bigger corporations since the publicity is more effective with them, and also they are able to both pay up and/or change.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Fair application of regulations is essential to rule of law. Going after one company for a common practice but not others is simply the more tyrannical rule by law.

FridgeSeal 9y ago

> if it is "industry standard", does that make it ethical Nope, not at all. Standard practice does not override ethics. Tobacco companies would consider advertising and promoting smoking as industry practice, but we cracked down down on that because encouraging people to do something that is demonstrably bad for their health was something we decided wasn't ethical and would be cracked down on.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

adamnemecek 9y ago

" thousands of businesses to grow their businesses and reach customers across the EU" EU doesn't care about this. Like this argument works only in the US.

onetimemanytime 9y ago

If it is "industry standard", does that make it ethical? Industry here is essentially Google and Facebook. The other "players" fight for the crumbs. Ethical? They need growth, every quarter.

dennisgorelik 9y ago

> ethical? Yes, tracking cookies is ethical. If some internet users do not want to get tracked - they can run their browser in Incognito Mode.

wruza 9y ago
This is inconvenient and disables other functionality.
lostlogin 9y ago
Opt out crap used to be physically mailed to people until it was made illegal. It’s a new version for the same gross behaviour.

unclebucknasty 9y ago

>enable hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow their businesses Seems innocuous enough until you really think about what they're saying. "But, tracking these people without their consent allows companies, including us, to make money off of them". That's actually a pretty brazen thing to say; as if the fact that people can be monetized should trump their right to privacy.

andrepd 9y ago
This kind of corporate doublespeak never fails to raise my blood pressure.

dalbasal 9y ago

Besides being a weak argument in such a context, it's disingenious. FB set the industry standard. Maybe half the standard along with Google. FB's system is much more reliant on tracking though. Google's can at least work anonymously, eg searched 'dentists' in some area. FB's is almost useless without tracking.

zaarn 9y ago

It's totally okay when somebody else is doing it too. A bit like when you wait for the green light to walk over the street; if you see someone walking the red light, you walk it too. Of course you still get flattened by a semi-truck doing 50 kph.

gsich 9y ago

of course not I also don't see any advantage for the user, getting ads is not in their interest.

TomMarius 9y ago
It is, if having access to the site is in their interest. The site needs ads to survive, they are a form of payment.
- xxs 9y ago
  ...or the site dies if ads are non-compliant. If there is some vacuum, it'd be filled by other monetization schemes.
  - TomMarius 9y ago
    What other monetization schemes? Noone is going to pay for access to a page with funny pictures, the site will cease to exist. Everything else will be behind a paywall and you call that an improvement? Up to this point in time, everyone had access to news, videos, science articles etc - for free. Those who didn't like being tracked had numerous options to avoid it. They also had the option to stop using these tracking sites. How is 13 year old poor kid going to read the news after everything is behind a paywall? How about a poor adult?
    - xxs 9y ago
      >Up to this point in time, everyone had access to news, videos, science articles etc - for free. I really don't like your definition of 'free'. wikipedia has been relying on donations for quite some time. guardian.co.uk is one of the recent examples asking for donations and working out for them. >science articles Ok that has to be a joke, the paywall journals subscriptions are nothing like ads. Please, don't conflate any pay method with pay wall (which is a pretty good one). If business cannot retain itself w/o breaking the law and has to shove unwanted images/videos/etc. straight in the face, it may as well not exist. The ads have degraded user experience in so bad ways that having a page with little content and 'next' button just to show more ads is pretty much the norm now.

qwerty456127 9y ago

It doesn't. And it is a mistake to take ethics for granted and think of it as a norm because the majority of people, including those who govern and implement businesses make unethical things every day. I hope this might change once but for today the only constructive strategy is to accept this fact and defend yourselves.

gregknicholson 9y ago

> to grow their businesses Very much not an excuse. It's up to the business to work out how to do this within the law. > and reach customers If I am not a Facebook user I am not your customer.

jtbayly 9y ago
It bears repeating that Facebook users aren’t their customers either. They are the product. It is even worse to be made into a product that FB sells when you aren’t even a FB user.
- mykull 9y ago
  Tell that to credit agencies

quickben 9y ago

Standards, ethics and legality are unconnected.