Facebook fears ruling may force it to pull social media platforms from EU
businesspost.ie
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It's amazing that Facebook still exists. Ironically, however, a previous campaign for one of my novels did work so somehow all the data collection does work for targeting potentially interested people. I guess that's the reason why they still exist despite all those deficiencies and rights violations.
Right now the EU is getting juiced.
The fiat economy is attention driven and fully controlled by the government so it makes no sense that EU industry should operate under the thumb of the US Federal Reserve Bank. If we're going to continue with the current government driven fiat economy, at least make sure it operates under our own government.
The US, China and Russia understood this. The EU did not. That's why the EU tried to fight back with small regulations, but it just wasn't enough. Foreign media companies need to be regulated out of existence if the EU intends to keep its sovereignty and competitive edge.
On the plus side, I think this ordeal has toughened EU industry. It's been a massive stress test. Now we have a very resilient and robust industry which is ready to receive its fair share of eyeballs.
Most of us prefer to chat via WhatsApp (yes, I know it's also FB, but I hope that'll disappear too) or Telegram. I'd love to see more people move to Telegram.
Most of us preferred to use meetup.com or the like for events, but Facebook just kind of sucked all the air out of that world. Without Facebook there might be a chance for new initiatives to take over.
The one thing FB still seems to do best around here is business listings and everything around that. But I'd also love to see startups take on this area when there isn't a Facebook to dominate.
It's ad free and open source.
Signal is not alternative to Messenger. Signal is an alternative to whatsapp.
It’s odd that people would recommend it over say Signal.
If you don't want others to use a client of their choice for some (real or imagined) security benefits, that's between you and them. I think most people will think your priorities are silly.
Because nobody that I want to talk to has it.
Once you start using it, you will never go back. It's awesome compared to Skype and messenger.
Because you need to convince all your friends to use it...
Can't Facebook keep EU data in the EU and "deploy" ADs to the various regions?
I'm not sure I understand why the data has to go the the US. The only thing I can image is that AI models are better with larger data sets. But even then it's not too awful to have an EU ML model and another for the rest of the world. Is it enough to exit the whole EU market?
most people in Europe. I think in this instance the EU is generally thought to be doing the right thing. The only people I hear moaning is the odd sour-puss on the internet.
Considering the mass surveilance issues of foreign governments(i.e US, China) I believe the law is sensible if not too weak. Even people who do not use Facebook can be/ are affected.
Nobody is stopping Facebook from complying with the laws. If they choose to exit the market rather then comply its on them.
What is the alternative? Let Facebook (and other companies ) do whatever they want?
Standard oil was a great company, that benefited consumers by driving down costs and improving the efficiency of oil production and distribution. Prices fell from ~30 cents to ~5 cents per gallon between 1870-1900, and when they were broken up by the government they had more than 100 competitors, and only ~65% market share.
Slavery also invigorates the markets with cheap produce for consumers and high profits for shareholders. Shall we legalize that as well?
Nothing is easy in reality and you can find positive effects to the markets in almost anything if you just look at localized effects
Edit: Introduction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGrP80GVkW4&feature=youtu.be
Besides they are not ready for public yet and hence not so much info on sign up page which I think is completely fine.
EDIT I suppose in the context of this discussion it is important to remember that for the first while, Facebook too was invite-only, it didn't do them any harm, but on the other hand is Orkut still around?
But ... there were tons such small shops, and small stations before there was Facebook.
Right now Facebook is best tool for them. If facebook goes by by, they will go to second best tool.
They will find out new way to promote them self, it might just work in their favor, since there will be a lot of smaller competitors in that space, there will be innovation and at least in the beginning cheaper ads.
If Facebook is replaced by the next thing, it just means that the data is not longer officially siphoned off to the NSA but only to local agencies.
I doubt much will change for (most) users or small businesses. There will be some collateral damage and for some it will indeed be devastating but the overwhelming majority won't notice much.+
A platform is usually supplanted by something else. Big auto supplanted big horse drawn carriage. Jet engines pushed out propeller engines. Murdering EU Facebook with nothing is like ripping out grandma’s USA made hearing aids until & hoping a local starts a hearing aid company.
Surely this wouldn't have a non-zero impact but nothing lasts forever -- especially not free services! Dealing with that is an integral part of doing business.
Besides, it's not like this will result in a complete communication blackout. If indeed the service Facebook is providing is valuable, there are plenty of other companies that will jump in. A little competition never hurt anyone ;).
Imagine FB ditching them. Not specially hard thing to do...
Oh, and you are saying that e-commerce company relays on not lawfull analytics ? Targeted ? Using medical data ? etc, etc...
From [1], slightly edited.
Facebook should be considered a national security threat as well, especially for us europeans.
[1]: https://www.commerce.gov/news/press-releases/2020/09/commerc...
Of the problems with data compliance I think this is something that sounds harder than it seems.
Which data goes where? If you're in the EU and a friend from the US comments on your post, which data goes where? And vice versa? Where should the graph stay?
Yeah, ok, your profile (and user data tracking) should stay local, but Fb is full of those edge cases.
Edit: not saying FB shouldn't comply, my question is more in the sense of how data should be organized to facilitate compliance
Just as we have distributed email,chat services, search engines etc we can also have a distributed facebook. Perhaps the client app will also become smarter. I believe you could actually move a lot of data on the client if you really want but the truth is facebook wants the data in one place, on their servers for the ads/resale.
Companies may not only have to pull out of the EU market but actively block EU customers like plethora of publishers that decided that GDPR compliance wasn’t worth the cost.
I don't know what problems Facebook is facing and maybe I'm missing something but I'm sure there is a technical solution to provide a facebook app/experience to EU customers. Maybe they would not be allowed to sell data like they did in the past but that will only make it slightly less profitable not un-operable.
If an EU user sends the US user a message it cannot leave the EU.
To claim that this is about monetization is laughable, this ruling doesn't prevent monetization it just prevents data flowing out of the EU.
The issues raised in this thread are serious, and people ignoring them thinking that this has anything to do about real privacy or curbing down on targeted ads.
You could run Facebook in the EU with GDPR and all the compliance issue and be able to monetize the data just as easily as you could in the US (you might not make as much money since EU users are still worth less for some reason to ad buyers but that's not the point), this is a disruptive measure intended to break the US monopoly on much of the tech industry, and it goes beyond just social media.
This pretty much breaks any data driven business model you have into two distinct ones, and if your EU and US datasets are too small individually when then though luck.
I think you got this wrong. That's how mail, email, chat, phone calls and pretty much all the "standard" communication services are working. The message can surely leave the EU. It's user's data (i.e profile info) that shouldn't leave the EU.
>> To claim that this is about monetization is laughable, this ruling doesn't prevent monetization it just prevents data flowing out of the EU.
This is about data protection which includes privacy rules among other things. Nothing stops US corporation from operating datacenters in the EU. They developed datacenters in the EU before all this anyway.
The "issue" is that the data stored within the EU is subject to EU law so legally the foreign corporations cannot share/resell the data with 3rd parties(e.g adv publishers, gov agencies such NSA etc) in a way that breaks EU law.
The EU just tries(nicely) to tighten the screw a bit... just look at the US-China-Tick-Tock-Oracle saga. Governments want exclusive access/ownership/control of theier citiens's data for obvious reasons.
>> This pretty much breaks any data driven business model you have into two distinct ones, and if your EU and US datasets are too small individually when then though luck.
How could EU and US dataset be too small individually? Too small for an inter-planetary marketplace? Here on earth they are quite big and valuable if not the most valuable.
If your concern is user's privacy/data protection you shouldn't be worried. You will try to store less data on your servers and give more power/ownership to the user anyway. In the end the data should be owned by the users.
If profile info can't leave the EU, then how will I know whom the message is from? Also isn't message data user data?
> That would be pretty amazing.
> Amen!
> That would be great.
So much optimism ! On the internerts !! What a rush...
But realy:
> This would be wonderful but obviously is not going to happen.
Yea.
But, pleas, someone explain to me why it is such imposibility to global corporation to have servers/datacenters per country ? Some contacts will obviously break. If it is such profitable business then whats a problem ? ;)
IRC did this in 90's. Also DNS works somehow, magically it seems... Why not have opensource protocol named FB ? ;)
This includes specifying who will have access to the data. Plain "3rd parties" will be illegal. Which means they cannot sell it willy nilly. Plus they have to ask every EU user for proper consent and inform them of any changes in data processing policy.
That already exists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ActivityPub
The thing is, I don't think it's reasonable to write a long and detailed reply to somebody who is trying to start a discussion without providing any arguments. He tried to start it, not me. I was inviting him to do so and justifying my lack of arguments ("you didn't provide arguments so I can't/won't comment on them") in my reply. Yeah, the one that you just copied and you modified in a manner that you thought was sarcastic or witty.
You're making the outrageous claim, the benefits of smartphones are widely known and well documented. There is a reason multiple billion (billion with a b) people are buying them and keep replacing them every 1-3 years, at quite hefty prices. You should be the one having to make a non-terse statement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_standard
On most forums your comment would be classified as a trolling attempt.
In case you're not trolling, off the top of my head, what's made possible by mobile internet access, as offered by smartphones:
* easily accessible shared calendars, everywhere you go, including getting reminders/notifications (instead of having an actual physical agenda + having to set actual reminders on a dumb phone)
* GPS navigation everywhere in the world, for free (instead of having to get a separate GPS device)
* instant translation services anywhere in the world, for free (this is a life saver in many situations); this can't be realistically be made available on any other kind of comparable smart device, except for ones you'd probably object, too (smartwatches, smart glasses, smart rings, whatever; laptops and tablets are too bulky and impractical, they don't count)
* apps for various specialized uses (for example to track time schedules for public transport, check availability for public bike services, etc.)
* easy note taking on the go, with instant backup and sharing with a group of people (you'd need the agenda previously mentioned but that wouldn't have backups or sharing)
* things which replace a bunch of physical stuff you'd have to carry around: credit cars, car keys, discount cards, paper airline tickets, agenda/notebook, GPS device, games device, etc.
Anyway, I've worked far more than your terse snarky comment ever deserved.
The smartphone is the quintessential "PC" (personal computer). For billions, it's the fist real computing device they have ever owned (and likely will ever own).
Never before have we as a species become more connected, and never in the human history has been so much abundance and opportunities for people of all sorts of backgrounds.
I don't want to write an essay, but you should read Industries of the Future by Alec Ross ( https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25111341-the-industries-... ).
He gives you a complete story and background behind the smartphone revolution.
One of the examples is the smartphone penetration in Africa, more people in Congo have smartphones than they have canalization, and for good reason. People are using their devices as a bank account (since a lot of banks refuse to service these areas), farmers are using their devices to compete in more marketplaces.
There are so many positives by technology and smartphones, that I cannot fathom that someone would go around and spread opinions that the harm outweighs the benefits.
Privacy and "social media disease" are unimportant compared to the benefits they give, you think my mother would rather give up social media because of Facebook tracking than be able to talk to her own twin brother who lives 3 countries away and sees her 2 times a year?
What those alternatives are, who will be making and maintaining them for the entire world, and what their way of financing their business is, nobody knows, though.
As I say this as someone who doesn't like Facebook. Basically, it's either Facebook or something Facebook-alike. Unfortunately, There Is No (Good) Alternative. It has to be something commercial and most commercial stuff at this scale will always pervert our way of life and many other things around it.
Necessary evils and all that.
That said smartphones being multifunction are very useful, and somewhat a security nightmare.
GPS devices are ok, but then again, they have most of the same security (and especially privacy) issues.
Facebook don't want the expense of separating out EU data. I can't blame them, they have nothing to gain, it's just less profit and more work.
I personally don't care for Facebook and I would love to see what innovations a Facebook exit would bring to Europe, but it would be rather destructive for many smaller businesses, and maybe we don't need that right now.
I assume after the election in November the EU and the US will try to negotiate a new data sharing agreement.
It would be in Facebooks interest to let the politicians know of their "dire" situation
There's no way Facebook would pull Facebook and Instagram from Europe. Too big of a market. I think it's a threat - "we pull out, and tell people why, and then you'll have EU-wide street protests and huge spike in anti-EU resentment; so maybe ease up on privacy protection a little, would you?".