7 ms·

GDPR Complaint vs. Facebook [pdf]

26 points by edf13 8y ago

edf13 8y ago
Much of this is fair... especially the trick used to entice people to rush through the acceptance of the new terms by using false message & notification alerts. But... a good proportion of this complaint is that the complainant wishes to continue to use Facebook without any penalty whilst still opting out of all data tracking. They state things such as it being a social connection to friends & family... similar to a telephone network. What they appear to be missing is the fact that it is their data that is paying for this service... unlike a telephone network which is pay-per-use!
- abakker 8y ago
  This is a very good point. Personally, I would love the opportunity to pay for facebook, in exchange for No ads, no data sharing outside of facebook. (I'm fine with opting in/out of product improvements). Maybe GDPR will lead companies to put a finite value on my data. i.e. would they rather a fixed $5/month, or the potential that some family photo I share might lead them to send me an ad that I might click on?
  - goalieca 8y ago
    I like the idea of paying for things but quite frankly, the Facebook product has long diverged from anything that I would want to pay for. Algorithmic news feeds and the feeling of sadness as everyone around me only post stuff to show off or post stupid political crap.
    - JeanMarcS 8y ago
      So do you still use it ? And if yes, why ? It's a serious question. Because if you think the product is that bad that you won't pay for it, why using it (you, in a general sense, not you goalieca personaly)
      - goalieca 8y ago
        I don't use it at all. I went cold turkey about 3 years ago after having someone post some photos from my wedding and someone who wasn't a friend got all pissy they weren't invited and started harassing us.
- vertex-four 8y ago
  The display of advertising is the payment, the data tracking is one potential mechanism by which advertising can be made more profitable. There are, I’d hope unsurprisingly, mechanisms by which advertising can be performed without data tracking.
- hadrien01 8y ago
  GDPR is very clear on the fact that opt-in on your data being used for tracking or "relevant" ads shouldn't condition your access to the website (article 7, paragraph 3 [1]) [1] https://gdpr.algolia.com/gdpr-article-7 https://gdpr.algolia.com/gdpr-article-7
  - vertex-four 8y ago
    Only if the lawfulness for processing is based in consent rather than “the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party” - exactly what is considered a legitimate interest is only going to wind up being settled between Facebook/Google and a regulator in court.
- KozmoNau7 8y ago
  Advertising is being used to pay for Facebook. Tracking is used to track userd and target ads based on that tracking, but that is not essential to Facebook's primary service of being a social network facilitator. You can even go and turn off targeted ads yourself, proving that it is not essential.
- Vivtek 8y ago
  I believe I remember seeing that the average annual benefit to Facebook of a user is something like $9. I would personally be ecstatic to be given the opportunity to subscribe to Facebook in exchange for control over my data and an absence of ads. Eventually this is inevitable. Facebook is doing itself no favors by insisting that free-plus-we-own-you is the only possible model for the future.
  - filleokus 8y ago
    For US users FB seems to make an average of around 20-25 USD per quarter[1], aka 80-100 USD per year or 6-8 USD per month. I wonder how much they make on users that say they are willing to pay to use it. My guess is that those customers probably are above average, since they (at least say they) have the disposable income to pay for FB, and hence are more valuable to show ads for [2]. It wouldn't surprise me if it would cost me 10-15 USD per month to cover the ad revenue FB is getting for me and my data, and the question is if I really would be willing to pay that. [1]: https://medium.com/@mlvb_at/facebook-earnings-q1-2018-a-reality-check-a9fd7133aa36 https://medium.com/@mlvb_at/facebook-earnings-q1-2018-a-real... [2]: I'm not sure if this reasoning is sound, but it seems resonable. I wonder if there is data/estimations on the distribution of ad revenue per user.
    - Vivtek 8y ago
      Your reasoning does seem sound. I'm sure there is plenty of data to that effect - and I'm equally sure that nobody outside Facebook has access to it. I think I might pony up $10 or $20 a month to know I was in control and to suppress all ads. I'm nearly certain I'm unusual in that regard, though.
- ookdatnog 8y ago
  I would like a Facebook-like service with a subscription model and without the large-scale data harvesting, but in the current market such a service cannot exist, even if it does everything right. Social networks have extremely strong network effect going on: the value of a social network to me is strongly dependent on who I can communicate with on that social network (i.e. how many of my friends or acquaintances have an account on the service). The size of the network trumps all other factors. A service that is technically inferior in every way may still be more successful if it got to market a month earlier. More importantly, although barrier to entry is an important factor in the adoption of any technology, I don't think there's a sector where its effect is as extreme as in the social network sector. Even requiring a payment of 1 cent per year would probably turn away enough users to make your service unviable (because of the barrier of setting up an online payment). So a paid-for competitor cannot exist. But in the meantime, Facebook has become the de facto standard for informal communication, much like e-mail is the standard for formal communication. And unlike e-mail, Facebook is not an open protocol where different vendors can provide their own implementation. You can avoid Facebook out of principle but you cannot replace it. Opting out of Facebook often means opting out of a significant chunk of social life. If you are not willing to make this sacrifice, this means that essentially you have no negotiating power over Facebook and will accept its terms and conditions no matter what they are. We already view access to electricity and a telephone as basic rights in developed nations, and we increasingly view an internet connection as a basic right. I think access to social network services (which are actually used by other people) also belong in that list, which is why I think the request of the complainant is reasonable (even if I'm not sure how the social network market should be organized to support this).
jsnell 8y ago
This is in practice a dup of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17161211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17161211
zerostar07 8y ago
I 'm not sure how well it will reflect in the court of public opinion if the EU's first ruling is that basically every website is not allowed to use ads to pay itself. There seem to be certain groups here in Europe who relish on this kind of "activism" . I m not sure how representative they are of public opinion, they are certainly very vocal. Do we know how strict the Austrian DPA is ?
- hansen 8y ago
  > their [EU] first ruling is that basically every website is not > allowed to use ads to pay itself. Of course they won’t. This is absurd.
- vertex-four 8y ago
  Advertising does not need to be targeted to a specific person to exist. Advertising has existed since the dawn of time without that ability, and frankly, marketing budgets are not going to wind up decreasing because companies can’t target individual people.
  - zerostar07 8y ago
    > to a specific person to exist Advertising was always trying to find the right target. Technology allowed this to become a lot more efficient. As long as targeting is anonymous and certain limitations are set, i m fine with it, we don't need to kill the patient here.
    - vertex-four 8y ago
      Targeting is not anonymous because the amount of data that is used for targeting almost always amounts to personally identifiable information. Even just “company this person works at” + “job title” can be PII, and Facebook processes both of those things in targeting, along with many many others.
      - zerostar07 8y ago
        i dont believe facebook allows targetting by company and in general this shouldnt be allowed to targeted advertising.
perlgeek 8y ago
Tangentially related: I've never signed up on Facebook, and never agreed to any of their privacy policies. Does that mean that, if any PII of me is found on Facebook, they are in GDPR violation?
- zerostar07 8y ago
  considering that a simple IP+timestamp can be PII, if you have ever seen anything from facebook's cdns , then maybe yes.

26 points by edf13 8y ago

Much of this is fair... especially the trick used to entice people to rush through the acceptance of the new terms by using false message & notification alerts. But... a good proportion of this complaint is that the complainant wishes to continue to use Facebook without any penalty whilst still opting out of all data tracking. They state things such as it being a social connection to friends & family... similar to a telephone network. What they appear to be missing is the fact that it is their data that is paying for this service... unlike a telephone network which is pay-per-use!

abakker 8y ago
This is a very good point. Personally, I would love the opportunity to pay for facebook, in exchange for No ads, no data sharing outside of facebook. (I'm fine with opting in/out of product improvements). Maybe GDPR will lead companies to put a finite value on my data. i.e. would they rather a fixed $5/month, or the potential that some family photo I share might lead them to send me an ad that I might click on?
- goalieca 8y ago
  I like the idea of paying for things but quite frankly, the Facebook product has long diverged from anything that I would want to pay for. Algorithmic news feeds and the feeling of sadness as everyone around me only post stuff to show off or post stupid political crap.
  - JeanMarcS 8y ago
    So do you still use it ? And if yes, why ? It's a serious question. Because if you think the product is that bad that you won't pay for it, why using it (you, in a general sense, not you goalieca personaly)
    - goalieca 8y ago
      I don't use it at all. I went cold turkey about 3 years ago after having someone post some photos from my wedding and someone who wasn't a friend got all pissy they weren't invited and started harassing us.
vertex-four 8y ago
The display of advertising is the payment, the data tracking is one potential mechanism by which advertising can be made more profitable. There are, I’d hope unsurprisingly, mechanisms by which advertising can be performed without data tracking.
hadrien01 8y ago
GDPR is very clear on the fact that opt-in on your data being used for tracking or "relevant" ads shouldn't condition your access to the website (article 7, paragraph 3 [1]) [1] https://gdpr.algolia.com/gdpr-article-7 https://gdpr.algolia.com/gdpr-article-7
- vertex-four 8y ago
  Only if the lawfulness for processing is based in consent rather than “the legitimate interests pursued by the controller or by a third party” - exactly what is considered a legitimate interest is only going to wind up being settled between Facebook/Google and a regulator in court.
KozmoNau7 8y ago
Advertising is being used to pay for Facebook. Tracking is used to track userd and target ads based on that tracking, but that is not essential to Facebook's primary service of being a social network facilitator. You can even go and turn off targeted ads yourself, proving that it is not essential.
Vivtek 8y ago
I believe I remember seeing that the average annual benefit to Facebook of a user is something like $9. I would personally be ecstatic to be given the opportunity to subscribe to Facebook in exchange for control over my data and an absence of ads. Eventually this is inevitable. Facebook is doing itself no favors by insisting that free-plus-we-own-you is the only possible model for the future.
- filleokus 8y ago
  For US users FB seems to make an average of around 20-25 USD per quarter[1], aka 80-100 USD per year or 6-8 USD per month. I wonder how much they make on users that say they are willing to pay to use it. My guess is that those customers probably are above average, since they (at least say they) have the disposable income to pay for FB, and hence are more valuable to show ads for [2]. It wouldn't surprise me if it would cost me 10-15 USD per month to cover the ad revenue FB is getting for me and my data, and the question is if I really would be willing to pay that. [1]: https://medium.com/@mlvb_at/facebook-earnings-q1-2018-a-reality-check-a9fd7133aa36 https://medium.com/@mlvb_at/facebook-earnings-q1-2018-a-real... [2]: I'm not sure if this reasoning is sound, but it seems resonable. I wonder if there is data/estimations on the distribution of ad revenue per user.
  - Vivtek 8y ago
    Your reasoning does seem sound. I'm sure there is plenty of data to that effect - and I'm equally sure that nobody outside Facebook has access to it. I think I might pony up $10 or $20 a month to know I was in control and to suppress all ads. I'm nearly certain I'm unusual in that regard, though.
ookdatnog 8y ago
I would like a Facebook-like service with a subscription model and without the large-scale data harvesting, but in the current market such a service cannot exist, even if it does everything right. Social networks have extremely strong network effect going on: the value of a social network to me is strongly dependent on who I can communicate with on that social network (i.e. how many of my friends or acquaintances have an account on the service). The size of the network trumps all other factors. A service that is technically inferior in every way may still be more successful if it got to market a month earlier. More importantly, although barrier to entry is an important factor in the adoption of any technology, I don't think there's a sector where its effect is as extreme as in the social network sector. Even requiring a payment of 1 cent per year would probably turn away enough users to make your service unviable (because of the barrier of setting up an online payment). So a paid-for competitor cannot exist. But in the meantime, Facebook has become the de facto standard for informal communication, much like e-mail is the standard for formal communication. And unlike e-mail, Facebook is not an open protocol where different vendors can provide their own implementation. You can avoid Facebook out of principle but you cannot replace it. Opting out of Facebook often means opting out of a significant chunk of social life. If you are not willing to make this sacrifice, this means that essentially you have no negotiating power over Facebook and will accept its terms and conditions no matter what they are. We already view access to electricity and a telephone as basic rights in developed nations, and we increasingly view an internet connection as a basic right. I think access to social network services (which are actually used by other people) also belong in that list, which is why I think the request of the complainant is reasonable (even if I'm not sure how the social network market should be organized to support this).

jsnell 8y ago

This is in practice a dup of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17161211 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17161211

zerostar07 8y ago

I 'm not sure how well it will reflect in the court of public opinion if the EU's first ruling is that basically every website is not allowed to use ads to pay itself. There seem to be certain groups here in Europe who relish on this kind of "activism" . I m not sure how representative they are of public opinion, they are certainly very vocal. Do we know how strict the Austrian DPA is ?

hansen 8y ago
> their [EU] first ruling is that basically every website is not > allowed to use ads to pay itself. Of course they won’t. This is absurd.
vertex-four 8y ago
Advertising does not need to be targeted to a specific person to exist. Advertising has existed since the dawn of time without that ability, and frankly, marketing budgets are not going to wind up decreasing because companies can’t target individual people.
- zerostar07 8y ago
  > to a specific person to exist Advertising was always trying to find the right target. Technology allowed this to become a lot more efficient. As long as targeting is anonymous and certain limitations are set, i m fine with it, we don't need to kill the patient here.
  - vertex-four 8y ago
    Targeting is not anonymous because the amount of data that is used for targeting almost always amounts to personally identifiable information. Even just “company this person works at” + “job title” can be PII, and Facebook processes both of those things in targeting, along with many many others.
    - zerostar07 8y ago
      i dont believe facebook allows targetting by company and in general this shouldnt be allowed to targeted advertising.

perlgeek 8y ago

Tangentially related: I've never signed up on Facebook, and never agreed to any of their privacy policies. Does that mean that, if any PII of me is found on Facebook, they are in GDPR violation?

zerostar07 8y ago
considering that a simple IP+timestamp can be PII, if you have ever seen anything from facebook's cdns , then maybe yes.