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The aspect I find most interesting and internationally relevant is that as these local rulings proliferate, they kinda make it visible to what degree companies

The aspect I find most interesting and internationally relevant is that as these local rulings proliferate, they kinda make it visible to what degree companies finance their operations by selling user data. The more the business model relies on this, the more likely companies are to get hit with a ruling like this — and it's not just the ruling that's interesting, but also what Facebook's reaction will be. If they stop offering or reduce WhatsApp services in Germany (or India), that's a great indicator that the service isn't profitable without the sale (or other commercial exploitation, Facebook is an ad company after all) of large amounts of user data.

vineyardmike 6y ago
Reducing service can also be a strong-armed way to force customers to advocate for them. "Want to keep talking to grandma? Better tell your government to leave us alone"
- leipert 6y ago
  I am actually using this argument in the inverse: “hey grandma, do you still wanna see baby pictures, please install <other-messenger>”
  - behnamoh 5y ago
    If only grandma could use Signal, etc. The problem is that Telegram has by far the best UI and UX IMO, and yet we cannot trust it. Then there are applications which we could trust more (like Signal) but they are ridiculously hard to use and lack many features. Actually, I would say FB Messenger also sucks a lot and apparently FB does not care.
    - IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
      not accurate. I was able to get grandma on Signal precisely because it was the little secret between us. She knew that a signal coming in was from me, and only me. I was using it to talk to her. And she thought it was cool that we talked via signal to her before any other family member caught on the signal craze. I was able to get my SO to use signal on the same principle. Pick the people in your life that care about you - and care back. You are available via signal, while you ingnore whatsapp et al. You answer right away on signal whereas on other stuff, you wait. Its funny how far along you can take a feature-lacking app provided its simple for others to use, and there is an emotional attachment in its use.
      - jackson1way 5y ago
        You could also customize the notification sound for incoming messages in whatsapp and mute (or just use a short plop sound for) anyone else for grandma. Now grandma can focus on learning to use only one app for all her grand children and will find all the pictures from all her relatives in one place and will more likely be able to even forward pictures to other people on her whatsapp. Assuming Grandmas in their 80s.
        feanaro 5y ago
        But then grandma is using WhatsApp, which is what we're trying to avoid. The point is not that it's possible to make her use WhatsApp. The point is that it's possible to make her use a better alternative.
        pvorb 5y ago
        But how is it better for Grandma? Does she really care on her own or did you talk to her until she accepted that she cannot receive messages from you unless she uses Signal?
        bonoboTP 5y ago
        She likely wouldn't know to care. But she most likely trusts the judgment of her grandson (mine does) in what's best.
        IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
        I didnt have to spell out instructions. I just told her to dowload the app. At its core, signal is still a messenger app. Its not hard to use. I dont think you realize how powerful are simple things like "good morning" and "i love you" to your family and loved ones. Give a little of it, and see the results.
        rakoo 5y ago
        Signal is an E2EE messenger app with as little shared metadata as possible. Unless Grandma uses the "Status" feature, or wants to know at what time a message was received or read, it provides the same features as Whatsapp with an increase in privacy. It's fair to say that it's a better alternative in her case.
    - ohlookabird 5y ago
      I don't know, my grand parents (80+ years) get along well with Signal. We have been using it actively over the past years and they can text, call, videocall and share pictures without issues. I am sure the UI can be improved, but it's not unusable at all.
    - viraptor 5y ago
      That whole UX issue really needs more explanation. For low-tech usage: you open signal, you select who you want to talk to, you see/type a message. The interface is almost the same as WhatsApp which people of all ages use every day. What's "ridiculously hard to use" here?
    - Siira 5y ago
      I trust Telegram, with its open API and third-party clients, more than a company that bans alternative clients. Why do they want me to use their client? Does it have some alterations from the source code?
  - noja 5y ago
    Is Grandma happy that none of the pictures are saved to her camera roll? This seems to be a gaping lack of a feature amongst people I know.
    - TeMPOraL 5y ago
      > Is Grandma happy that none of the pictures are saved to her camera roll? Why would they be? If I mail you a bunch of pictures in an envelope, they don't magically convert to negatives and transfer themselves to the roll of film inside your analog camera. <rant> Snark aside, "camera roll" must be one of the most confusing attempts at "user-friendly" abstractions I've seen in widely-deployed software, especially with so many apps shipping their own implementations (in addition to the OS/camera gallery), some of which mix together some combination of pictures downloaded to (but not taken by) the phone, pictures existing only in the cloud, pictures existing only in a different app's cloud... There's skeuomorphism, and there's building a bad abstraction on top of a limitation of ancient tech, seemingly forgetting the ~10+ year period between analog cameras and smartphones with good imaging sensors, where everyone got used to digital cameras shooting photos to a "memory card". My non-tech-savvy relatives are definitely more confused about "camera rolls" in their phones than they were about managing JPGs on SD cards using standard desktop OS filesystem tools. Hell, number one support request I get from family these days is, "How do I copy ${these photos from a "camera roll" of some app} to ${OS gallery app} and to ${this USB stick}? We want to show all photos of ${grandchild} to ${neighbor} without Internet. And we want to have them in ${a folder on a PC} so it's safe, and we can view it on a large screen." The process isn't that involved, just confusing, and somewhat different for every other app. It's like vendors really don't want people to store their photos as files anymore :). </rant>
      - noja 5y ago
        > Why would they be? Because they were saved to the central photo place with WhatsApp, and she likes seeing all of her photos there.
      - d110af5ccf 5y ago
        > It's like vendors really don't want people to store their photos as files anymore In case you haven't noticed, there seems to be an active effort to do away with the notion of files. Because making things more abstract is supposed to reduce confusion somehow.
  - dspillett 5y ago
    That is only going to work if you are prepared to be seen as unhelpful. The likelihood is that she'll just as someone else to show her the photos and complain about you while doing so. Personally I'd be fine with that, but it depends upon your family dynamic. I took a similar tack over malware & backups some years ago. I was spending far too much time being family tech support in "oh shit" moments, trying to remove crap from people's laptops and other, then (when I gave up doing it that way) hunting down all their files and backing them up before hosing and reinstalling the OS, hunting out the correct drivers, and each time giving advice on keeping backups, avoiding malware, telling them that they must keep any driver discs (or generate them from the machine) when they get a new device so they can be identified & reinstalled later, etc, each time being completely ignored because once things were restored they completely forgot the issue. Once I stopped rolling over and being infinitely and immediately helpful, instead saying "without the backups and such I asked you to keep it might take a few hours to sort this out, I can do it for you but I probably can't fit it in for a couple of weeks" most stopped asking me to help - not because they see my time as having value or because they've started to get less dim about letting malware in, but because I'm seen as grumpy and unhelpful.
- DeliriumTrigger 6y ago
  That's exactly what they are doing right now...https://www.welivesecurity.com/2021/05/11/whatsapp-limit-features-users-reject-new-data-sharing-rules/ https://www.welivesecurity.com/2021/05/11/whatsapp-limit-fea...
  - valenterry 6y ago
    That happened before though and it didn't work out. I don't know why it should be different that time. Also, telegram is used a lot in Germany (compared to other countries) and together with Signal & others it got used much more recently. I don't think Whatsapp has much leverage here. Not sure if Telegram is better for the users though.
    - sneak 5y ago
      Telegram is not end to end encrypted, and thus is not really "secure" in the sense that we mean when we say "secure messenger".
- mrtksn 6y ago
  This probably won't fly in Germany as Germans are very privacy cautious. Germany is a hole in the Google Street View Europe coverage because of this. They can limit some functionality and the Germans might be O.K. with it, however the margin in functionality would be someone else's opportunity.
  - durnygbur 5y ago
    Germans are NOT privacy conscious or cautious - see SCHUFA, Rundfunkbeitrag debt collection, countless Inkasso, Payback, applying for apartment rental, invasive copyright predators. They simply hate anything which smells internet. Germans hate the internet.
    - zelphirkalt 5y ago
      You are both kind of right. I would say that we Germans like our privacy perhaps more than some others, but that we do have many blind spots and are generally not well educated about the issues with Facebook and similar. There is also a difference between the uninformed young user (useds) and the people, who have been around long enough and have an attention span long enough to recognize the patterns.
    - mrtksn 5y ago
      When I was traveling across Europe, I had hard time taking photos of regular houses that I liked. People will get out and ask why I was photographing. Maybe it is the way it is because Germans like it that way, not everyone needs to have photo of their house. Not necessarily hating the internet. Also, I hated the fact that Germany did not have Street View, used it extensively at other places to pick neighbourhoods to go or not to go. When I asked people I met how comes you don’t have Street View here, they all said that they liked their privacy and it has to do with the times when the government was watching everyone, so they are more cautious about it.
      - herbst 5y ago
        That's just what they tend to think. From a closer outside view Germans are not too picky with their data. As someone mentioned above, to many private companies who are allowed to access, process and use your data.
lucian1900 6y ago
The same happened at a smaller scale when Chinese regulators ruled loot boxes must disclose their loot tables. Even though they aren’t guaranteed to be identical in other countries, a great deal was learned about how such games operate.
mbilal 6y ago
The real problem is that its never enough for these companies. Charge me some monthly fee for whatsapp and I'll pay, but no, that's not enough for them.
- rodgerd 5y ago
  I mean that was literally their business model until Facebook purchased them. It was a successful stand-alone company! And now look at it. The bad drives out the good.
  - e-clinton 5y ago
    What does “successful” mean to you? Are you claiming they were profitable? Of so, what’s the source?
- beefield 5y ago
  That is one of the regulations that should be applied to adtech companies: Adtech companies should be required to offer a paid version of all their products with a price that covers the costs of producing the service (including a decent profit margin but not including tracking/adtech components of the free version) but with strong guarantees that customers [1] opting to pay are not tracked, not shown ads and their data is in no other way monetized or sold to third parties. [1] as opposed to products...
- herbst 5y ago
  You say that. But back when WhatsApp actually was a paid app nobody bothered paying.
1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago
"Germany's leading data protection regulator for Facebook has banned the social network from using data from WhatsApp users." Not to be pedantic, but the parent comment is making a common mistake by using the term "selling" to refer to the way that "tech" companies like Facebook/WhatsApp sell users out. Facebook/WhatsApp does not need to "sell" data. They can honestly say they do not sell data, and that is exactly what they say in their public communications, hoping to fool readers who believe "selling user data" is the problem. (Maybe they give data away instead. Researchers, API users, and others have had signifcant access in the past. Regulating only commercial exploitation might not prohibit those transfers.) What they do sell is access to users. Thus what we want to regulate is not "selling" but "using".^1 (Ideally we want to regulate collection as well, but this does not account for data already collected.) Read the press release from the HmbDfPI. There is nothing about selling, only about collecting and using. https://datenschutz-hamburg.de/assets/pdf/2021-05-11-press-release-facebook.pdf https://datenschutz-hamburg.de/assets/pdf/2021-05-11-press-r... 1. One instance where we might want to prohibit sale (or transfer) of data is in mergers and acquisitions. If, e.g, the user entrusts company A with data, then if company A goes bankrupt, company B should not be able to acquire the data without the user's express permission.
- nr2x 5y ago
  It's a little more complicated with the WhatsApp business tools, this isn't normal adtech stuff. Search the web for "whatsapp crm integration".
- eqvinox 5y ago
  That's why I put the "(or other commercial exploitation, Facebook is an ad company after all)" there. And the difference, as you already note yourself, is splitting hairs. It's the kind of thing you find in a novel, making a deal with the devil who then goes to trick you on a technicality. They're selling the fact that they have the data. They're selling limited access to the data. It's just exploiting the resource to the maximum gain; if they sold the user data itself they'd be selling the crown jewels and obsolete themselves.
  - deleted 5y ago
peteretep 5y ago
> If they stop offering or reduce WhatsApp services in Germany (or India), that's a great indicator that the service isn't profitable without the sale (or other commercial exploitation, Facebook is an ad company after all) of large amounts of user data. Don't we already know that about WhatsApp though? What other revenue source does it have?
- eqvinox 5y ago
  Well, there's no other visible revenue source currently, but (a) we don't know what the ad/user data revenue looks like down to the finer details¹, and (b) theoretically they could have planned to turn it into a subscription service (pretty unlikely, but who knows…) ¹ some information could be gleaned from public filings, but the more interesting question is the relationship between amount of data extracted and revenue gained; any public filings only show the status quo.
  - culturestate 5y ago
    > theoretically they could have planned to turn it into a subscription service (pretty unlikely, but who knows…) WhatsApp originally was a subscription service; when I first signed up, it cost $1 per year. They dropped the fee in 2016[1], and now Facebook is trying[2] to go back to the subscription model for business. 1. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/whatsapp-to-go-completely-free-and-drop-annual-subscription-price-a6818971.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne... 2. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/22/facebook-to-charge-for-whatsapp-business-services.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/22/facebook-to-charge-for-whats...
    - eqvinox 5y ago
      Oh, interesting, thanks, I didn't actually know that.
- stefan_ 5y ago
  Well it used to cost like $1 per year and that covered operating expenses many times over, yet..
crossroadsguy 5y ago
I don’t think you can “talk to” or warn companies like Facebook. You just shut them down bring them to their knees. You’ve to do to them what Apple App Store is doing to them. I think all these warnings and then those rare pocket change fines are nothing but slaps on the wrists that Facebooks of the world might be allocating in their annual expenses predictably. But convenience comes in the way and Facebook knows it. As for India, Facebook will be fine as long as it shares data with the Govt. Hell, it might even become official communication app in India endorsed by no less than the glorious PM while hugging tightly his “dear friend Mark” on stage.
- pmiller2 5y ago
  That's the thing that really gets me. GDPR fines can be anywhere from 2-4% of annual revenue (not profit, revenue), yet none have even come close. I guarantee you if you took 4% of Facebook's gross revenue right off the top, they'd notice. For 2020, their gross revenue was just shy of $86B, so, 2-4% of that would be about $1.7-3.4B. Considering that 2020 EBITDA was $39.5B, that would represent 4-8% of their profits. Tell me that's not going to affect the stock price. Because that's what you need to do to actually get these companies to do something is materially affect their stock price and piss off the shareholders.
  - viraptor 5y ago
    Almost no organisation / judge / regulator / ... will hit someone with the full fine immediately. This is an incentive to comply not an attempt at killing the company. It seems to work since I haven't heard of gdpr ruling being repeated for the same offence so far. I expect the fine would just go up.
    - pmiller2 5y ago
      Taking away a few percent of a company's profit, while still leaving a quite substantial profit margin is not "killing the company." There needs to be some teeth behind these fines to make companies respect them. You may not have heard of repeat fines for the same offense, but all that shows is that they fix things after they're pointed out. Wouldn't it be better if they thought about how they're handling peoples' data before they got caught doing it wrong? Somebody needs to be made an example of, and a company like Facebook that not only can absorb the hit but is not well known for respecting peoples' privacy is a great target, IMO.
jp555 5y ago
How does Facebook "sell user data"? When I buy ads on Facebook I cannot access any user's data. Do they have another product offering where I can buy user data? I dont see anything like that.
- imchillyb 5y ago
  > How does Facebook "sell user data"? @jp555 https://www.androidauthority.com/signal-ads-banned-facebook-1223289/ https://www.androidauthority.com/signal-ads-banned-facebook-... That article showcases what Signal was trying to show Facebook's users. The data accumulated cannot be purchased, but the power of that harvested data certainly can be.
  - jp555 5y ago
    I might gave this wrong, but only the users saw their own data in the ads they were served. Signal can choose lots of parameters for who should see their ads, but they dont get to see who those people are.
- germanier 5y ago
  In this case, they plan to transfer user data into another division of their company. They have bought WhatsApp LLC, with cash and shares in hand, and got (among other things) user data in return. This is a pretty clear case of selling user data of such a company, isn't it? (Note that GP never claimed that Facebook itself sold any data just that they exploit data commercially - they have given third parties extensive access to user data in the past though) Anyway, these discussions on the technicality of the term "selling data" vs "selling access to users using data" is just means to deflect from the real problem. It doesn't get away by rephrasing.
- trutannus 5y ago
  You don't call up Facebook and ask for a few TB of data. You use ad targeting services which are essentially an abstraction on top of a personal data aggregation and analysis system.
  - 5y ago

vineyardmike 6y ago

Reducing service can also be a strong-armed way to force customers to advocate for them. "Want to keep talking to grandma? Better tell your government to leave us alone"

leipert 6y ago
I am actually using this argument in the inverse: “hey grandma, do you still wanna see baby pictures, please install <other-messenger>”
- behnamoh 5y ago
  If only grandma could use Signal, etc. The problem is that Telegram has by far the best UI and UX IMO, and yet we cannot trust it. Then there are applications which we could trust more (like Signal) but they are ridiculously hard to use and lack many features. Actually, I would say FB Messenger also sucks a lot and apparently FB does not care.
  - IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
    not accurate. I was able to get grandma on Signal precisely because it was the little secret between us. She knew that a signal coming in was from me, and only me. I was using it to talk to her. And she thought it was cool that we talked via signal to her before any other family member caught on the signal craze. I was able to get my SO to use signal on the same principle. Pick the people in your life that care about you - and care back. You are available via signal, while you ingnore whatsapp et al. You answer right away on signal whereas on other stuff, you wait. Its funny how far along you can take a feature-lacking app provided its simple for others to use, and there is an emotional attachment in its use.
    - jackson1way 5y ago
      You could also customize the notification sound for incoming messages in whatsapp and mute (or just use a short plop sound for) anyone else for grandma. Now grandma can focus on learning to use only one app for all her grand children and will find all the pictures from all her relatives in one place and will more likely be able to even forward pictures to other people on her whatsapp. Assuming Grandmas in their 80s.
      - feanaro 5y ago
        But then grandma is using WhatsApp, which is what we're trying to avoid. The point is not that it's possible to make her use WhatsApp. The point is that it's possible to make her use a better alternative.
        pvorb 5y ago
        But how is it better for Grandma? Does she really care on her own or did you talk to her until she accepted that she cannot receive messages from you unless she uses Signal?
        bonoboTP 5y ago
        She likely wouldn't know to care. But she most likely trusts the judgment of her grandson (mine does) in what's best.
        IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
        I didnt have to spell out instructions. I just told her to dowload the app. At its core, signal is still a messenger app. Its not hard to use. I dont think you realize how powerful are simple things like "good morning" and "i love you" to your family and loved ones. Give a little of it, and see the results.
        rakoo 5y ago
        Signal is an E2EE messenger app with as little shared metadata as possible. Unless Grandma uses the "Status" feature, or wants to know at what time a message was received or read, it provides the same features as Whatsapp with an increase in privacy. It's fair to say that it's a better alternative in her case.
  - ohlookabird 5y ago
    I don't know, my grand parents (80+ years) get along well with Signal. We have been using it actively over the past years and they can text, call, videocall and share pictures without issues. I am sure the UI can be improved, but it's not unusable at all.
  - viraptor 5y ago
    That whole UX issue really needs more explanation. For low-tech usage: you open signal, you select who you want to talk to, you see/type a message. The interface is almost the same as WhatsApp which people of all ages use every day. What's "ridiculously hard to use" here?
  - Siira 5y ago
    I trust Telegram, with its open API and third-party clients, more than a company that bans alternative clients. Why do they want me to use their client? Does it have some alterations from the source code?
- noja 5y ago
  Is Grandma happy that none of the pictures are saved to her camera roll? This seems to be a gaping lack of a feature amongst people I know.
  - TeMPOraL 5y ago
    > Is Grandma happy that none of the pictures are saved to her camera roll? Why would they be? If I mail you a bunch of pictures in an envelope, they don't magically convert to negatives and transfer themselves to the roll of film inside your analog camera. <rant> Snark aside, "camera roll" must be one of the most confusing attempts at "user-friendly" abstractions I've seen in widely-deployed software, especially with so many apps shipping their own implementations (in addition to the OS/camera gallery), some of which mix together some combination of pictures downloaded to (but not taken by) the phone, pictures existing only in the cloud, pictures existing only in a different app's cloud... There's skeuomorphism, and there's building a bad abstraction on top of a limitation of ancient tech, seemingly forgetting the ~10+ year period between analog cameras and smartphones with good imaging sensors, where everyone got used to digital cameras shooting photos to a "memory card". My non-tech-savvy relatives are definitely more confused about "camera rolls" in their phones than they were about managing JPGs on SD cards using standard desktop OS filesystem tools. Hell, number one support request I get from family these days is, "How do I copy ${these photos from a "camera roll" of some app} to ${OS gallery app} and to ${this USB stick}? We want to show all photos of ${grandchild} to ${neighbor} without Internet. And we want to have them in ${a folder on a PC} so it's safe, and we can view it on a large screen." The process isn't that involved, just confusing, and somewhat different for every other app. It's like vendors really don't want people to store their photos as files anymore :). </rant>
    - noja 5y ago
      > Why would they be? Because they were saved to the central photo place with WhatsApp, and she likes seeing all of her photos there.
    - d110af5ccf 5y ago
      > It's like vendors really don't want people to store their photos as files anymore In case you haven't noticed, there seems to be an active effort to do away with the notion of files. Because making things more abstract is supposed to reduce confusion somehow.
- dspillett 5y ago
  That is only going to work if you are prepared to be seen as unhelpful. The likelihood is that she'll just as someone else to show her the photos and complain about you while doing so. Personally I'd be fine with that, but it depends upon your family dynamic. I took a similar tack over malware & backups some years ago. I was spending far too much time being family tech support in "oh shit" moments, trying to remove crap from people's laptops and other, then (when I gave up doing it that way) hunting down all their files and backing them up before hosing and reinstalling the OS, hunting out the correct drivers, and each time giving advice on keeping backups, avoiding malware, telling them that they must keep any driver discs (or generate them from the machine) when they get a new device so they can be identified & reinstalled later, etc, each time being completely ignored because once things were restored they completely forgot the issue. Once I stopped rolling over and being infinitely and immediately helpful, instead saying "without the backups and such I asked you to keep it might take a few hours to sort this out, I can do it for you but I probably can't fit it in for a couple of weeks" most stopped asking me to help - not because they see my time as having value or because they've started to get less dim about letting malware in, but because I'm seen as grumpy and unhelpful.
DeliriumTrigger 6y ago
That's exactly what they are doing right now...https://www.welivesecurity.com/2021/05/11/whatsapp-limit-features-users-reject-new-data-sharing-rules/ https://www.welivesecurity.com/2021/05/11/whatsapp-limit-fea...
- valenterry 6y ago
  That happened before though and it didn't work out. I don't know why it should be different that time. Also, telegram is used a lot in Germany (compared to other countries) and together with Signal & others it got used much more recently. I don't think Whatsapp has much leverage here. Not sure if Telegram is better for the users though.
  - sneak 5y ago
    Telegram is not end to end encrypted, and thus is not really "secure" in the sense that we mean when we say "secure messenger".
mrtksn 6y ago
This probably won't fly in Germany as Germans are very privacy cautious. Germany is a hole in the Google Street View Europe coverage because of this. They can limit some functionality and the Germans might be O.K. with it, however the margin in functionality would be someone else's opportunity.
- durnygbur 5y ago
  Germans are NOT privacy conscious or cautious - see SCHUFA, Rundfunkbeitrag debt collection, countless Inkasso, Payback, applying for apartment rental, invasive copyright predators. They simply hate anything which smells internet. Germans hate the internet.
  - zelphirkalt 5y ago
    You are both kind of right. I would say that we Germans like our privacy perhaps more than some others, but that we do have many blind spots and are generally not well educated about the issues with Facebook and similar. There is also a difference between the uninformed young user (useds) and the people, who have been around long enough and have an attention span long enough to recognize the patterns.
  - mrtksn 5y ago
    When I was traveling across Europe, I had hard time taking photos of regular houses that I liked. People will get out and ask why I was photographing. Maybe it is the way it is because Germans like it that way, not everyone needs to have photo of their house. Not necessarily hating the internet. Also, I hated the fact that Germany did not have Street View, used it extensively at other places to pick neighbourhoods to go or not to go. When I asked people I met how comes you don’t have Street View here, they all said that they liked their privacy and it has to do with the times when the government was watching everyone, so they are more cautious about it.
    - herbst 5y ago
      That's just what they tend to think. From a closer outside view Germans are not too picky with their data. As someone mentioned above, to many private companies who are allowed to access, process and use your data.

lucian1900 6y ago

The same happened at a smaller scale when Chinese regulators ruled loot boxes must disclose their loot tables. Even though they aren’t guaranteed to be identical in other countries, a great deal was learned about how such games operate.

mbilal 6y ago

The real problem is that its never enough for these companies. Charge me some monthly fee for whatsapp and I'll pay, but no, that's not enough for them.

rodgerd 5y ago
I mean that was literally their business model until Facebook purchased them. It was a successful stand-alone company! And now look at it. The bad drives out the good.
- e-clinton 5y ago
  What does “successful” mean to you? Are you claiming they were profitable? Of so, what’s the source?
beefield 5y ago
That is one of the regulations that should be applied to adtech companies: Adtech companies should be required to offer a paid version of all their products with a price that covers the costs of producing the service (including a decent profit margin but not including tracking/adtech components of the free version) but with strong guarantees that customers [1] opting to pay are not tracked, not shown ads and their data is in no other way monetized or sold to third parties. [1] as opposed to products...
herbst 5y ago
You say that. But back when WhatsApp actually was a paid app nobody bothered paying.

1vuio0pswjnm7 5y ago

"Germany's leading data protection regulator for Facebook has banned the social network from using data from WhatsApp users." Not to be pedantic, but the parent comment is making a common mistake by using the term "selling" to refer to the way that "tech" companies like Facebook/WhatsApp sell users out. Facebook/WhatsApp does not need to "sell" data. They can honestly say they do not sell data, and that is exactly what they say in their public communications, hoping to fool readers who believe "selling user data" is the problem. (Maybe they give data away instead. Researchers, API users, and others have had signifcant access in the past. Regulating only commercial exploitation might not prohibit those transfers.) What they do sell is access to users. Thus what we want to regulate is not "selling" but "using".^1 (Ideally we want to regulate collection as well, but this does not account for data already collected.) Read the press release from the HmbDfPI. There is nothing about selling, only about collecting and using. https://datenschutz-hamburg.de/assets/pdf/2021-05-11-press-release-facebook.pdf https://datenschutz-hamburg.de/assets/pdf/2021-05-11-press-r... 1. One instance where we might want to prohibit sale (or transfer) of data is in mergers and acquisitions. If, e.g, the user entrusts company A with data, then if company A goes bankrupt, company B should not be able to acquire the data without the user's express permission.

nr2x 5y ago
It's a little more complicated with the WhatsApp business tools, this isn't normal adtech stuff. Search the web for "whatsapp crm integration".
eqvinox 5y ago
That's why I put the "(or other commercial exploitation, Facebook is an ad company after all)" there. And the difference, as you already note yourself, is splitting hairs. It's the kind of thing you find in a novel, making a deal with the devil who then goes to trick you on a technicality. They're selling the fact that they have the data. They're selling limited access to the data. It's just exploiting the resource to the maximum gain; if they sold the user data itself they'd be selling the crown jewels and obsolete themselves.
- deleted 5y ago

peteretep 5y ago

> If they stop offering or reduce WhatsApp services in Germany (or India), that's a great indicator that the service isn't profitable without the sale (or other commercial exploitation, Facebook is an ad company after all) of large amounts of user data. Don't we already know that about WhatsApp though? What other revenue source does it have?

eqvinox 5y ago
Well, there's no other visible revenue source currently, but (a) we don't know what the ad/user data revenue looks like down to the finer details¹, and (b) theoretically they could have planned to turn it into a subscription service (pretty unlikely, but who knows…) ¹ some information could be gleaned from public filings, but the more interesting question is the relationship between amount of data extracted and revenue gained; any public filings only show the status quo.
- culturestate 5y ago
  > theoretically they could have planned to turn it into a subscription service (pretty unlikely, but who knows…) WhatsApp originally was a subscription service; when I first signed up, it cost $1 per year. They dropped the fee in 2016[1], and now Facebook is trying[2] to go back to the subscription model for business. 1. https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/whatsapp-to-go-completely-free-and-drop-annual-subscription-price-a6818971.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/ne... 2. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/22/facebook-to-charge-for-whatsapp-business-services.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/22/facebook-to-charge-for-whats...
  - eqvinox 5y ago
    Oh, interesting, thanks, I didn't actually know that.
stefan_ 5y ago
Well it used to cost like $1 per year and that covered operating expenses many times over, yet..

crossroadsguy 5y ago

I don’t think you can “talk to” or warn companies like Facebook. You just shut them down bring them to their knees. You’ve to do to them what Apple App Store is doing to them. I think all these warnings and then those rare pocket change fines are nothing but slaps on the wrists that Facebooks of the world might be allocating in their annual expenses predictably. But convenience comes in the way and Facebook knows it. As for India, Facebook will be fine as long as it shares data with the Govt. Hell, it might even become official communication app in India endorsed by no less than the glorious PM while hugging tightly his “dear friend Mark” on stage.

pmiller2 5y ago
That's the thing that really gets me. GDPR fines can be anywhere from 2-4% of annual revenue (not profit, revenue), yet none have even come close. I guarantee you if you took 4% of Facebook's gross revenue right off the top, they'd notice. For 2020, their gross revenue was just shy of $86B, so, 2-4% of that would be about $1.7-3.4B. Considering that 2020 EBITDA was $39.5B, that would represent 4-8% of their profits. Tell me that's not going to affect the stock price. Because that's what you need to do to actually get these companies to do something is materially affect their stock price and piss off the shareholders.
- viraptor 5y ago
  Almost no organisation / judge / regulator / ... will hit someone with the full fine immediately. This is an incentive to comply not an attempt at killing the company. It seems to work since I haven't heard of gdpr ruling being repeated for the same offence so far. I expect the fine would just go up.
  - pmiller2 5y ago
    Taking away a few percent of a company's profit, while still leaving a quite substantial profit margin is not "killing the company." There needs to be some teeth behind these fines to make companies respect them. You may not have heard of repeat fines for the same offense, but all that shows is that they fix things after they're pointed out. Wouldn't it be better if they thought about how they're handling peoples' data before they got caught doing it wrong? Somebody needs to be made an example of, and a company like Facebook that not only can absorb the hit but is not well known for respecting peoples' privacy is a great target, IMO.

jp555 5y ago

How does Facebook "sell user data"? When I buy ads on Facebook I cannot access any user's data. Do they have another product offering where I can buy user data? I dont see anything like that.

imchillyb 5y ago
> How does Facebook "sell user data"? @jp555 https://www.androidauthority.com/signal-ads-banned-facebook-1223289/ https://www.androidauthority.com/signal-ads-banned-facebook-... That article showcases what Signal was trying to show Facebook's users. The data accumulated cannot be purchased, but the power of that harvested data certainly can be.
- jp555 5y ago
  I might gave this wrong, but only the users saw their own data in the ads they were served. Signal can choose lots of parameters for who should see their ads, but they dont get to see who those people are.
germanier 5y ago
In this case, they plan to transfer user data into another division of their company. They have bought WhatsApp LLC, with cash and shares in hand, and got (among other things) user data in return. This is a pretty clear case of selling user data of such a company, isn't it? (Note that GP never claimed that Facebook itself sold any data just that they exploit data commercially - they have given third parties extensive access to user data in the past though) Anyway, these discussions on the technicality of the term "selling data" vs "selling access to users using data" is just means to deflect from the real problem. It doesn't get away by rephrasing.
trutannus 5y ago
You don't call up Facebook and ask for a few TB of data. You use ad targeting services which are essentially an abstraction on top of a personal data aggregation and analysis system.
- 5y ago