Can I file a restraining order against Facebook? Or Google?
Our legal system isn't equipped to handle the majority of free people deciding to act like broad-spectrum stalkers within the span of a few years. Society only works if most people aren't evil or utterly susceptible to evil influence.
United States v. Miller, 425 U.S. 435
https://transition.fcc.gov/Reports/tcom1996.txt
Probably the text starting here:
SEC. 702. PRIVACY OF CUSTOMER INFORMATION.
Title II is amended by inserting after section 221 (47 U.S.C.
221) the following new section:
SEC. 222. PRIVACY OF CUSTOMER INFORMATIONWe need new laws for this. GDPR is a good start, if one happens to be an EU citizen, if a bit toothless.
We need new laws because automated collection of vast amounts of personal data, at scale, is a thing different in kind from manually collecting personal data about a specific person. Due to the expense and difficulty, the earlier system would tend to scale broadly with someone's fame, or at least wealth, which matches our expectations: it's not surprising that, say, a gossip magazine would have a fat file on Leonardo DiCaprio, and we figure he has lawyers on hand to deal with any consequent fallout.
In fact, we all used to be quite grateful for the unsung laborers who would collect and publish a doxxing book, called the white pages, which would list the names, phone numbers, and addresses, of most local people. Of course they were legally obligated to unlist those who requested it...
It actually has a better bite than most. The problem is that the one suposed to do the biting doesn't do a lot of it.
[1] https://law.jrank.org/pages/9409/Privacy-Common-Law.html
Not as long as you're maintaining an active relationship with them. First step is to break up and stop using their services entirely.
How do I enforce deletion if I have unwittingly only a "shadow account" in Facebook?
Fines here are proportional to profits, so it would be absurdly high for Facebook.
> and if they disabled their business in the EU there would be riots.
Not really. In the last five years I've seen an ever growing anti American sentiment around here. I guess it's because all the antics that were coming from the angry Cheeto.
America is now seen as unstable and unreliable. The sentiment around here is basically (generally speaking): "and what happens of they decide to elect (another) Trump again?"
Line em up.
I published a tool on GitHub for deleting message history in the most efficient way I could find. Yet users of the tool sometimes get their accounts banned because Discord's TOS prohibits unauthorised use of their API. I speculate this is because they don't want custom clients which don't send back telemetry.
Discord is either tone-deaf to common privacy concerns or they're completely conscious of them and don't want people to clear their message history.
Millions of websites/apps/stores willingly deliver this information to Facebook/Google for free, and it's your relationship with each of those websites/apps/stores that governs the collection and sharing of that data.
GDPR, for instance, makes a distinction between "data controllers" and "data processors." The businesses are the controllers, and FB/Google are processors. Both have responsibilities regarding the handling of your data, but most of the requirements fall on the controller. The processors are able to assume that the controller had the right to share the data with them.
This is from FB’s terms and conditions, so I guess they can still keep the data.
If you agree to any other website’s terms and conditions saying “any third party can track you”, you have again given permission.
In this case, most people haven't read the Facebook terms of service and it is probably unreasonable to expect everyone to not only read them, but to keep abreast of any updates. So it's a grey area. And if you pass laws and regulations around data privacy, then FB won't be able to legally impose such conditions. But as I said earlier, there isn't much inertia behind data privacy. Nobody with power wants it.
Or is too influenced by big technopoly lobbying dollars.
I completely disagree with this thought process. If a website is asking your birthday, every like / dislike , every detail about relatives and is able to predict if you like someone even before you do .. you better know how they will use all this data.
To coin a meme: "Ain't nobody got time for that"
Yes, and they also depends on power dynamics.
That's why there are a lot of restrictions on what can be written in a contract between public utilities and users. An electricity provider could strong-arm users into signing draconian contracts otherwise.
Social networks have the same negative externalities: if most of your friends move from using emails to using Facebook to communicate and you are not on it your life gets provably worse. You are cut out from a lot of your social circle.
Having walled-garden social networks is anti-competitive by design.
Unfortunately legislators turn a blind eye to this.
[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/firm-facebooks-shadow-profiles...
I find it hard to believe that they can't associate more information with those profiles than just who has who else as a contact (or has in the past), some derived/guessed and some from purchasing access to other data-sets, and I find impossible to believe that they won't if they can. Not just FB but other purveyors of advert targetting stalkerdom too. This isn't "don't trust the man" foil-hat paranoia - knowing as much as possible about as many people as possible is their well documented business model.