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Comment by mbostleman | Hacker News Reader

For me there is a not a technical fix for the problem. The fact that my feed fills up with ads for something I Googled immediately prior to alt+tabbing to FB is creepy and annoying, but it's not the real problem. The real problem is that I know they have the data (and they still will after I "clear" it) and it can be used for a lot more than advertising. I don't trust them. That's the problem.

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That would be illegal (in the EU, at least). Why would a successful business risk that?

It would, they already did, pure audacity, and they're getting burned for it.

Meanwhile, a loud minority (mostly from outside the EU) complains "why don't you respect their best efforts?" -- because it's too little, too late, this law has been on the horizon for years, but instead of preparing they've been increasing their data harvesting efforts, only making it harder for themselves to actually comply when it finally passed.

When has success ever stopped business breaking the law?

Well, you've described a problem for which this isn't a technical fix, but for which there is a technical fix: a decentralized open source social network on which you retain complete control over which of your data ever enters its ecosystem.

And it will come. It will take years, but it will come.

And then Facebook will buy it and change it.

Absolutely. A distributed system where each user controls their data is theoretically an architectural fix. But not one that is an option for FB since owning my data is the core of their business model.

Yep, that's how I see it too. It's becoming increasingly obvious.

Fortunately "existing as a for-profit corporation" is not a fundamental right to FB.

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