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Facebook faces ‘devastating’ EU-to-US data transfer ban
- lucasnortj 5y agoonly a mad person uses this cancer of an application
- graphtrader 5y agoAhh poor Facebook. I feel so bad for them. Has to be tough not being able to steal people's data.
- toyg 5y agoNow now, they don’t “steal” it, they just “collect” it. All this data falls off the back of a truck, they just pick it up.
- miralize 5y ago"That information was just resting in our servers"
- mortehu 5y agoIsn't the main function of Facebook to allow users to upload or enter contents for others to view? It seems like people here tend to think of ad profiles as the only data that matters, but Facebook "collects" messages you post and photos you upload, just like most email services "collect" all your emails. This kind of data is far more sensitive than your ad profile.
- iamacyborg 5y ago> This kind of data is far more sensitive than your ad profile. Yes and no. certainly people share and post sensitive stuff on Facebook. But Facebook knowing I've visited certain categories of websites because those sites have a Facebook pixel or they're running a third party widget that has a FB pixel is historically a much more opaque form of data collection.
- lanstin 5y agoThe valuable data they have is to build a model of your personality and emotional dynamics, where they can control the input, what you see in timeline, and watch the output, the mood revealed by your subsequent actions and posts. Knowing what stimulus will upset you enough to donate or share a given type of content is pretty valuable, even compared to knowing you need a new laptop.
- mrathys 5y agoThe main function of Facebook is to spy on people, the providers of the data. All data gathered is then sold to paying customers. They make all their money this way. If they only had a graph with persons and relations between these persons and did nothing else with it than show this to these people, maybe we were not facing this discussion now. The cynic in me would say: store all data on EU soil ;)
- oauea 5y agoIndeed, just like movie piracy is not stealing.
- sgregnt 5y agoThis comment is very biased, who are you to speak for all facebook users? For one thing, Facebook allows me to stay connected with my family in another country. I'm infinity grateful to it for that, and I'm ready to exchange getting this amazing free service for my very personal information. No one stole this data from me, I'm happy with this arrangement. Same with other the services: Google's, amazon, and what not... Hell, the progress all these amazing services brought made my live on earth a heaven really (not sarcastic)! I'm personaly not afraid of big tech, imho they compete with each other, they rise and fall, let them be. I'm afraid of regulation that incentivizes lobbying, kill competition, and create long term monopolies.
- osmarks 5y agoThey do not compete with each other (potential competitors just get bought out), and already do lobbying in vast quantities. And there's nothing about inter-country communication which requires Facebook's data mining, inasmuch as there are already network links between them which Facebook uses.
- jpttsn 5y agoI’d view “buying competitors” as a sign of “competing”. Otherwise, in the Middle Ages, “European kingdoms don’t fight wars, they just conquer one another”
- MinorTom 5y agoYou do realize any potential Facebook alternative will face the same problems, further entrenching Facebooks market position. This even applies to federated social networks like matrix - a EU server can't easily send messages containing personal data to US ones without at least signing an contract with the required "standard contractual clauses" (technically an contract is always required).
- tifadg1 5y agois that really the case? - i.e. what if private citizens run the servers - i don't see why these rules would apply to them.
- birksherty 5y agoJust stop tracking everything people do online and show ads based on content, none of these laws would have been necessary in the first place.
- thunkshift1 5y agoIts possible you will have eu only fb, Asia only fb which would not be such a bad thing. Not only would the new entities break monopoly, but also be more compliant than haughty American tech companies with their billions of daus
- rich_sasha 5y agoI can’t see why it would be devastating in practice. Why can’t the servers that deduce every little thing about the users be also based in EU? If I want a worldwide ad (is that even a thing?) for left-leaning horse owners between ages of 20-27.5 with a child and at least 2 partners, can’t that be dished out from an EU server for EU users?
- twobitshifter 5y agoI, an American, have a friend in France, where is our friendship stored? I send a message to my friend in France they send me one back, where are these two messages stored? We have a photo taken while traveling together in Belgium with 2 other Americans, what server? I could see this being a problem only effectively solved by a separate EU and US Facebook. It is not clear what data they are worried about transmission of, but each type seems to need special consideration. You mention ad-targeting data, but most data collected by Facebook useful to the surveillance agencies Ireland is worried about are more personal than that.
- trasz 5y agoI suspect cases like this are a tiny minority. You could handle them by falling back to the current way of doing this, ie US servers, and still protect the vast majority of data that's not related to US citizens.
- pjc50 5y agoA tiny minority of Facebook users is millions of people. Lots of people have international family and friends. A fallback approach is infeasible for legal requirements, unless it's there for appealing the fine to a lower value. The question is potentially very difficult, and could only be resolved by constructive engagement with the party making the rules. Don't forget what happens when people travel.
- peoplefromibiza 5y agomany more people have friends and family in the US, but are not allowed to enter the country freely. Borders are heavily controlled by USA, why shouldn't other countries to the same?
- hirundo 5y ago> The case stems from European Union concerns that United States government surveillance may not respect the privacy rights of EU citizens These are valid concerns that I share as a U.S. citizen concerned about my own privacy from government surveillance. It's appropriate for other countries to share them and to take action. But is it clear that government surveillance by EU countries is more respecting of privacy? It seems to me more like the 5/9/14 Eyes countries are cooperating on just these kinds of intrusions. It isn't clear to me that Facebook data held on European servers will be any more secure from intelligence agencies than on U.S. servers ... including from U.S. agencies.
- trasz 5y agoWould you, as an US citizen, be fine with Facebook transferring all your data to another country with no control over it?
- jmclnx 5y agoPeople using facebook ? They do not care at all about where, how and volume of their data. All they want is "pointy/clicky" access to numb their minds. But storing data outside the US, where would US people get their pics from should facebook fold, I will loose my best and free Backup Servise, the NSA :)
- etrabroline 5y agoI've seen this argument a lot recently. "If we screw other people in a sufficiently convoluted and Rube-Goldbergian enough way then it's almost like we're not screwing over anyone at all!"
- pessimizer 5y agoI'd be more comfortable with that than with my own government, that cares what I do and how I vote, having access to facebook's data on me. The scariest part of European data sitting on US servers for Europeans is that the US will have absolutely no regulations keeping them from harvesting, slicing, and packaging every bit of it, and sending it back to Europe. Keeping the data from being shipped out is a good step (hopefully not just focused on Facebook), but reimportation of that data is a laundering process that can render local data protections moot.
- jmclnx 5y agoI wonder what would happen if Facebook choose to pull out of the EU with a large banner "Due to new EU regulations, we have to stop operations until regulations change". Would there be a large public outcry ? Me, I would like to see facebook, google, apple... reigned in, but they have a large bank account where that can "donate" to pols, so we will probably see a big loophole appear.
- jlelse 5y agoI wouldn't find it bad for Facebook to be banned in Europe. This would be a chance for less data-hungry messaging services and social networks.
- ramphastidae 5y agoThey would never do that. Eyeballs for ads are all that matter. Their service is based on quantity, not quality.
- jug 5y agoI use Facebook but them leaving EU would be amazing because I only use it to keep in touch with friends and family, and now they'd be forced off it. <3
- tomjen3 5y agoIt would be inconvenient for me, but as long as there is something else we can move to (Diaspora), I will survive. I know two people who have married people from the US who have moved here. I imagine they wouldn't be very happy not being able to interact with their friends across the seas nearly as easily. Who would they blame? That is a good question. On the other hand, Twitter would be pretty pointless if I could only interact with EU tweeps. I don't know if they would be hit by this, I assume there is a GDPR exception for this the user publishes?
- varispeed 5y agoIt's not possible, because how are they going to block EU nationals from continuing to use the service? People can use VPN, disguise themselves as Americans and so on. There is no way they can wiggle themselves out of it unless they'll close the entire operation, and that is not going to happen as Facebook is a spying front.
- jug 5y agoMakes sense and I think this should've been required all along. Moving personal data into new jurisdictions is just a trainwreck waiting to happen.
- jpalomaki 5y agoIn modern cloud data is likely encrypted on disk and typically spread across servers. It’s not really feasible to access the data by physically taking control of the servers or disks. Does the physical location really matter? If authorities need to access the data, they would anyways need a higher level access to it. In this sense it is more relevant who is controlling the data and where and under what jurisdiction that entity is located.
- cerved 5y agoIt's not a matter of data being encrypted, it's about the US authorities being able to demand decrypted access to the data of EU citizens from Facebook.
- cromka 5y agoAnd, although this is an educated guess, about US businesses paying for Facebook ad services targeting EU customers using the collected data in a way that GDPR would block in EU.
- cerved 5y agoNo, not really. This doesn't have anything to do with US companies using ad targeting services that don't comply with GDPR. Schrems 2 is case primarily about US companies working with US authorities. https://edpb.europa.eu/our-work-tools/our-documents/other/frequently-asked-questions-judgment-court-justice-european-union_en https://edpb.europa.eu/our-work-tools/our-documents/other/fr...
- cromka 5y agoOh, so basically that thing that dictates that US can ask any US-based company to disclose any data in its possession, and so to protect EU citizens, EU wants US-based companies to store EU data on EU servers. If I also remember correctly from reading up on Tutanota, it gets so nuanced, that to the US authorities it is enough that a single US employee of a non-US company has access to such data to summon them to disclose it? Either way, Facebook is in deep shit.
- marderfarker2 5y agoAll these problems are already solved by China, by outright banning these data leeches a decade ago.
- saos 5y agoErm today is the dead to accept new terms. I obviously haven’t done this. What will be the implications?
- macinjosh 5y agoIt is incredibly rich for governments to regulate what can be done with data citizen willingly give up in the name of "protecting privacy". Yet they can monitor our Internet and phone activity without consequence. It is so disheartening watching the EU ruin the Internet. First the effect GDPR was to litter the web with PITA popups and now they want to tell people what to do with their data. The EU cannot collapse soon enough. The weight of the bureaucracy will be their downfall.
- mdasen 5y agoI know that a lot of people's reaction to this might be, "screw Facebook", but the ramification might be "entrench Facebook such that no one can compete with them." If the Irish data regulator enforces the provisional order, it would effectively end the privileged access companies in the US have to personal data from Europe and put them on the same footing as companies in other nations outside the bloc. This isn't just about Facebook. This is about whether every small company trying to bootstrap itself needs to take large steps to architect their data storage in a way that allows for segregation between European and American data. For Facebook, this might be costly and annoying to deal with. But what if you want to launch a new Flickr, Tumblr, Twitter, Airbnb, recipe website, etc.? You're a team of 2-4 trying to get things off the ground. Do you need to make sure that you are unavailable in the EU? Do you need to work on splitting data storage before you even find product-market-fit? Like, Airbnb certainly hosts lots of data about people and places, but when they were just starting out and trying to get traction, it seems like it would be a big hurdle to comply with this. Facebook can comply with this. I think it would be a big burden on anyone trying to compete with Facebook going forward or the ability of new companies to get off the ground.
- laurent92 5y agoIt was quite easy, in my software, to have a settings with “data storage location” EU/US/Asia, and we transfer the data over to the country of their choice, with a little downtime. Granted there is a main database with everyone’s key/auth/chosen database, but that’s the only centralized data.
- edoceo 5y ago> team of 2-4 It seems you'd have loads of other hurdles to get over before intl-data becomes the thing that would block your growth. My 4 person team solves with country specific domains and hosting. Before that we had to figure out how to be profitable and "default alive" which was orders of magnitude harder than data silos.
- worewood 5y agoYeah agree with you. I don't see what the difficulty is. It is mostly an infrastructure issue and if you're starting from zero you're going cloud anyways
- rblion 5y agoThe WWW is still in it's adolescence. Facebook empire is the next AOL, Yahoo. Mark my words.
- lanstin 5y agoBut Steve Case was not pushing to win 100% he was happy to be biggest player with competitors. So AOL was a lot less ruthless. Also our revenue model was “fun stuff for people to use so they pay a subscription” not “sell peoples intimate data to data brokers.” But definitely a lesson in how innovation can leave an organization. Informally, I blame the influx of MBAs and people attracted more to success than to building fun user experiences, but of course lobbying from phone and cable to block access to the higher speed plumbing which was allowed by law for POTS made the business model of subscribe for a good experience untenable.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- iends 5y agoIgnoring Facebook entirely, this impacts the US company I work for in a big way. We are in data centers throughout Europe and follow GDPR, best security practices, limit access to production data, etc. Our company’s interpretation is that we will need EU based teams (that we will have to hire for) to help debug production issues and to help customers because if I look at the data to triage I’ve transferred it out of the EU.
- yawaworht1978 5y agoThe EU lawmakers are doing what the gutless paid for and owned US lawmakers cannot or will not do. The US congress balooneyd around with Zuckerberg, he took the piss out of them. The EU politicians are a little bit less shameless and do something to protect the population(not even the local electorate, they have the ability to see beyond the box). Facebook and Instagram are designed to keep people more "engaged"(addicted) , in order to collect more data and push ads down everyones throat and retarget those who do not want any business with them. Tried to delete FB, ig or WA account completely? Every imaginable Ui obstruction and retention trick will bother you on the way out. The mother ship wants all the data intermingled to be more efficient. Hell no, team EU lawmakers all the way.
- shakezula 5y agoThis is why every time I hear someone complain about GDPR i gently remind them that it’s the exact type of legislation people say they want to protect their data. People are so short sighted.
- Barrin92 5y agoPeople also allocate the blame in weird directions. Like when the topic of the popups and privacy controls comes up people often blame lawmakers for making 'annoying' laws, when really they should blame the companies for violating privacy. The annoying popups exist because the companies are data hungry, the laws just require them to make it transparent.
- corobo 5y agoI want them to be safe with my data! I don't care about my customer's data!
- saddlerustle 5y ago> Tried to delete FB, ig or WA account completely? Every imaginable Ui obstruction and retention trick will bother you on the way out. Deleting WhatsApp is Settings -> Account -> Delete My Account -> Delete My Account Deleting Facebook is Settings -> Account Ownership -> Deactivation and Deletion -> Delete Account (With a very clear choice between deactivation and permanent deletion) -> Delete Account Compare that to unsubscribing from the New York Times...
- denton-scratch 5y agoI trade as a car-thief. Enforcing the laws against theft would have devastating consequences for my business. Can I challenge those laws? Nope. If my business depends on breaking the law, then I have two choices: pay the penalties, or cease trading.