7 ms·

Meta’s behavioral ads will finally face GDPR privacy reckoning in January

92 points by nemoniac 4y ago

anony999 4y ago
A gentle reminder that GDPR is not really just about the annoying cookie banner(which most of the time are not GDPR compliant anyway).
- s3r3nity 4y ago
  So 5 years later we need to search that hard for maybe one win for GDPR legislation?
  - jylam 4y ago
    Google, "GDPR fines", second link : https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ You are welcome.
    - s3r3nity 4y ago
      Cool - they paid for their own bureaucracy with a bunch of small fines with no net benefit to society.
      - mtmail 4y ago
        Click on 'fine' to sort the table by amount. The first 10 in the list are 1.9 billion Euro together.
        anonymousab 4y ago
        Both the scope of companies fined, the trade of fines and the size of the fines are potentially orders of magnitude too small to even come close to keeping pace with the greatest violations.
      - darrenf 4y ago
        The benefit to society largely comes from those who have complied, not the punitive damages from those who haven't.
- Etheryte 4y ago
  It's always funny when someone complains about that, because the cookie law (ePrivacy Directive) is a different thing, it isn't even from GDPR.
Radim 4y ago
Original source: https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-personalized-ads-facebook-instagram-and-whatsapp-declared-illegal https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-personalized-ads-facebook-instag... The source = noyb is the organization (founded Max Schrems) that actually filed the complaint, hired lawyers, fought the Irish DPA tooth and nail for 4.5 years. Essentially doing all the leg work – great job!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
stephc_int13 4y ago
Monopolies built on ads end up being not much more than a global tax on business. Not really different than the old mafia offering "protection" to local shops. Advertisement seems to be necessary for products discovery, but it used to be healthier when it was less monopolistic.
- aspyct 4y ago
  I'm happy with the fact that I need to pay for advertisement. It has always been the case, and if it can boost my sales, that's still a win. However I'm not happy with the fact that if you don't pay ads (or want to conform to shitty content formats), then you have zero visibility. But then again, it has always been the case, even before social media or www existed. What I certainly can't endorse is fb's use of our personal data that they collect without our consent. For example the local broadcasts they do on wifi networks to figure out who else is around (yes, it's a thing, or was at least, I've seen it). Screw you facebook.
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    not everyone agrees that your capital allows you to deserve our attention
    - zdragnar 4y ago
      People have been demanding your attention to sell you things since people had things to sell - vendors shouting out from market stalls to storefront displays to door to door sales to newsprint, radio and television ads. Getting your attention has literally always been a part of selling things.
      - mschuster91 4y ago
        One might be tempted to wonder how a communist or at least strongly government-regulated economy would fare. When you have only one supermarket chain, for example, why do advertising at all? Why have dozens of variations of the same products, just with different brands, assaulting your eyes the whole time you walk through a supermarket? Or worse, not just our eyes but also our ears with "store radio" yelling at us to try the new novelty super-soft toilet paper? That is maybe the worst side effect of the USSR collapse: once the counter-example went away, capitalism had free rein in going as excessive as it wanted, because the alternative (not being blared at by ads all the time) simply didn't exist any more. We literally can't imagine such a place any more... it reminds me of 1984, with the difference that we don't lack the words to describe that, instead we know that without a worldwide revolution, there will be no realistic way of turning the wheels.
iicc 4y ago
Ironic to link to a website doing a similar thing - illegally using "legitimate interest" to justify data processing.
- jacooper 4y ago
  Here is the actual link https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-personalized-ads-facebook-instagram-and-whatsapp-declared-illegal https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-personalized-ads-facebook-instag... Techcrunch is useless.
  - ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
    @dang Can we update the URL?
cloutchaser 4y ago
What's a bit sad about this is that legislation like this is actually going to benefit the largest corporations (as usual). If you want to sell detergent or coca cola, you can advertise to everyone, because anyone can buy your product. If you want to advertise a new invention of a small light that catches mosquitos (which I recently bought from an IG ad), your market is pretty small and Facebook's targeting was actually pretty awesome at helping you build a business. I'm not saying that collecting all this data is ok, but it is rather annoying that yet again, regulation just basically fucks with small businesses (and facebook), and in return we will again, only see toothpaste and detergent and perfume and german car ads everywhere.
- alisonatwork 4y ago
  Or, instead of spying on millions of individuals and then selling ad space based on the results of that illegal behavior, ad companies could do what they always did before which is identify venues that attract a certain audience and sell the ad space in front of those venues. For an ad company that also owns two of the biggest media websites in the world, this should not be a difficult problem.
  - cloutchaser 4y ago
    Your comment shows you have no experience with the power of targeted ads and how it’s an order of magnitude better than “targeting venues with audiences”. Which is why you’re getting downvoted in case you’re interested
    - Nextgrid 4y ago
      Just because it works doesn’t make it right. Stealing cars is also more profitable that buying them legitimately.
      - cloutchaser 4y ago
        Your entire comment is about what companies “could” do instead, implying that’s somehow a viable alternative. It’s not. Whether it’s right or not is a different question, which is exactly what I am debating from both sides in my original comment.
IgorPartola 4y ago
Slightly off topic, but recently I got to interact with a group of about 40 college students and took the opportunity to ask them what social media they used. Here are some results that if I was Zuckerberg I would find concerning: - Facebook: 2 of 40 have accounts. One said he does not use it at all. The other said she uses it to pull up her baby pictures because that’s where her mom put them. - Instagram. 3 of 4. Use it for its messenger capabilities, do not post. - Snapchat. Nobody. - TikTok. 1 of 40 knew somebody who posts videos. - Twitter. 5-6 of 40 use it but said they are worried about what it will be in the future. - Discord. A little over half said they use it routinely. I should have asked more about this. College kids are often strong indicators of what will be considered cool by the next generation and it sounds to me like Facebook/Instagram is a walking corpse.
- ajdude 4y ago
  Almost everyone I know has been switching to discord, the exception is about half of my family (including parents and grandmother) who has switched to Telegram for interactions.
  - onionisafruit 4y ago
    How does that work? Do friend groups and families have their own discord servers?
    - IgorPartola 4y ago
      Pretty much. I am a part of about a half dozen servers like that.
    - ajdude 4y ago
      Yep. I have a couple "Family" telegram channels, and I'm in several discord servers for friend groups. For a while I was living out of telegram, even using it to read Hacker News (front page items would end up in a telegram channel). I've since moved to RSS as it's less distracting though.
- wintermutestwin 4y ago

92 points by nemoniac 4y ago

A gentle reminder that GDPR is not really just about the annoying cookie banner(which most of the time are not GDPR compliant anyway).

s3r3nity 4y ago
So 5 years later we need to search that hard for maybe one win for GDPR legislation?
- jylam 4y ago
  Google, "GDPR fines", second link : https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ https://www.enforcementtracker.com/ You are welcome.
  - s3r3nity 4y ago
    Cool - they paid for their own bureaucracy with a bunch of small fines with no net benefit to society.
    - mtmail 4y ago
      Click on 'fine' to sort the table by amount. The first 10 in the list are 1.9 billion Euro together.
      - anonymousab 4y ago
        Both the scope of companies fined, the trade of fines and the size of the fines are potentially orders of magnitude too small to even come close to keeping pace with the greatest violations.
    - darrenf 4y ago
      The benefit to society largely comes from those who have complied, not the punitive damages from those who haven't.
Etheryte 4y ago
It's always funny when someone complains about that, because the cookie law (ePrivacy Directive) is a different thing, it isn't even from GDPR.

Radim 4y ago

Original source: https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-personalized-ads-facebook-instagram-and-whatsapp-declared-illegal https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-personalized-ads-facebook-instag... The source = noyb is the organization (founded Max Schrems) that actually filed the complaint, hired lawyers, fought the Irish DPA tooth and nail for 4.5 years. Essentially doing all the leg work – great job!

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

stephc_int13 4y ago

Monopolies built on ads end up being not much more than a global tax on business. Not really different than the old mafia offering "protection" to local shops. Advertisement seems to be necessary for products discovery, but it used to be healthier when it was less monopolistic.

aspyct 4y ago
I'm happy with the fact that I need to pay for advertisement. It has always been the case, and if it can boost my sales, that's still a win. However I'm not happy with the fact that if you don't pay ads (or want to conform to shitty content formats), then you have zero visibility. But then again, it has always been the case, even before social media or www existed. What I certainly can't endorse is fb's use of our personal data that they collect without our consent. For example the local broadcasts they do on wifi networks to figure out who else is around (yes, it's a thing, or was at least, I've seen it). Screw you facebook.
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  not everyone agrees that your capital allows you to deserve our attention
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    People have been demanding your attention to sell you things since people had things to sell - vendors shouting out from market stalls to storefront displays to door to door sales to newsprint, radio and television ads. Getting your attention has literally always been a part of selling things.
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      One might be tempted to wonder how a communist or at least strongly government-regulated economy would fare. When you have only one supermarket chain, for example, why do advertising at all? Why have dozens of variations of the same products, just with different brands, assaulting your eyes the whole time you walk through a supermarket? Or worse, not just our eyes but also our ears with "store radio" yelling at us to try the new novelty super-soft toilet paper? That is maybe the worst side effect of the USSR collapse: once the counter-example went away, capitalism had free rein in going as excessive as it wanted, because the alternative (not being blared at by ads all the time) simply didn't exist any more. We literally can't imagine such a place any more... it reminds me of 1984, with the difference that we don't lack the words to describe that, instead we know that without a worldwide revolution, there will be no realistic way of turning the wheels.

iicc 4y ago

Ironic to link to a website doing a similar thing - illegally using "legitimate interest" to justify data processing.

jacooper 4y ago
Here is the actual link https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-personalized-ads-facebook-instagram-and-whatsapp-declared-illegal https://noyb.eu/en/noyb-win-personalized-ads-facebook-instag... Techcrunch is useless.
- ThePowerOfFuet 4y ago
  @dang Can we update the URL?

cloutchaser 4y ago

What's a bit sad about this is that legislation like this is actually going to benefit the largest corporations (as usual). If you want to sell detergent or coca cola, you can advertise to everyone, because anyone can buy your product. If you want to advertise a new invention of a small light that catches mosquitos (which I recently bought from an IG ad), your market is pretty small and Facebook's targeting was actually pretty awesome at helping you build a business. I'm not saying that collecting all this data is ok, but it is rather annoying that yet again, regulation just basically fucks with small businesses (and facebook), and in return we will again, only see toothpaste and detergent and perfume and german car ads everywhere.

alisonatwork 4y ago
Or, instead of spying on millions of individuals and then selling ad space based on the results of that illegal behavior, ad companies could do what they always did before which is identify venues that attract a certain audience and sell the ad space in front of those venues. For an ad company that also owns two of the biggest media websites in the world, this should not be a difficult problem.
- cloutchaser 4y ago
  Your comment shows you have no experience with the power of targeted ads and how it’s an order of magnitude better than “targeting venues with audiences”. Which is why you’re getting downvoted in case you’re interested
  - Nextgrid 4y ago
    Just because it works doesn’t make it right. Stealing cars is also more profitable that buying them legitimately.
    - cloutchaser 4y ago
      Your entire comment is about what companies “could” do instead, implying that’s somehow a viable alternative. It’s not. Whether it’s right or not is a different question, which is exactly what I am debating from both sides in my original comment.

IgorPartola 4y ago

Slightly off topic, but recently I got to interact with a group of about 40 college students and took the opportunity to ask them what social media they used. Here are some results that if I was Zuckerberg I would find concerning: - Facebook: 2 of 40 have accounts. One said he does not use it at all. The other said she uses it to pull up her baby pictures because that’s where her mom put them. - Instagram. 3 of 4. Use it for its messenger capabilities, do not post. - Snapchat. Nobody. - TikTok. 1 of 40 knew somebody who posts videos. - Twitter. 5-6 of 40 use it but said they are worried about what it will be in the future. - Discord. A little over half said they use it routinely. I should have asked more about this. College kids are often strong indicators of what will be considered cool by the next generation and it sounds to me like Facebook/Instagram is a walking corpse.

ajdude 4y ago
Almost everyone I know has been switching to discord, the exception is about half of my family (including parents and grandmother) who has switched to Telegram for interactions.
- onionisafruit 4y ago
  How does that work? Do friend groups and families have their own discord servers?
  - IgorPartola 4y ago
    Pretty much. I am a part of about a half dozen servers like that.
  - ajdude 4y ago
    Yep. I have a couple "Family" telegram channels, and I'm in several discord servers for friend groups. For a while I was living out of telegram, even using it to read Hacker News (front page items would end up in a telegram channel). I've since moved to RSS as it's less distracting though.
wintermutestwin 4y ago