> The question the media should be asking Facebook is why can't they just stop tracking those users?
Because it would reduce their profit margin, and some chunks of their founding society hold that corporations are duty-bound to maximize profits.
Because it would reduce their profit margin, and some chunks of their founding society hold that corporations are duty-bound to maximize profits.
I'm not trying to excuse their unpardonable behaviour here, just trying to think unemotionally about what might be going on behind the scenes. Personally I wish they'd stop tracking me - and I have no FB account. I may have to emigrate to Belgium. Good beer an added incentive.
But this isn't new, these complaints about privacy and tracking have been around a decade, they didn't build facebook before anyone knew the constant tracking was controversial, they built it over a decade+ knowing the whole time that they were the subject of constant criticism.
They have switches all over their site for things like turning off targeted advertising, and they have entire infrastructures for dealing with local laws, so they idea that it's unfeasible for them to remove the tracking for any reason other than they wanted it to be that way is bordering on dishonest.
If that's the case, and facebook complies, then I think I'll start doing all my browsing through a VPN that exits in Belgium or Germany then.
On the flipside of that very same coin, <insert three-lettered agency here> claims that it is difficult to discern between who's an American citizens and who's not, so they just deal with it "honestly", afterwards (even though the DOJ has found them to be breaching the 4th numerous times).
I think we've reached a stage where compulsion, through punitive fines, is the only viable means to make these entities respect the boundaries that have been erected.
It might not be much effort to create the infrastructure to delimit their tracking (in both cases) but they have a much higher ROI for not doing so, currently, than actually doing so (if that makes sense).
I'd think the code that serves your core business needs and brings in the real money is very conservatively managed -- and judging by the circumstantial evidence we have, I believe that's exactly the case for them.
I get that likely this very likely means that just burning the whole thing to the ground and starting from scratch for most functionality would be less of a time sink, but the point is more that Facebook actually begin to engage in operations to remove tracking from their infra, not just throw up their hands and say "It'll be too much work!". We can know for sure if it's a new code base that just never had it to begin with, and Facebook was transparent in the migration process.
Regardless, though, I do get that the thrust of your point is that this is not a trivial task.
I hope that gets fixed!