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Comment by graphtrader | Hacker News Reader

Ahh poor Facebook. I feel so bad for them. Has to be tough not being able to steal people's data.

You do realize any potential Facebook alternative will face the same problems, further entrenching Facebooks market position.

This even applies to federated social networks like matrix - a EU server can't easily send messages containing personal data to US ones without at least signing an contract with the required "standard contractual clauses" (technically an contract is always required).

is that really the case? - i.e. what if private citizens run the servers - i don't see why these rules would apply to them.

Just stop tracking everything people do online and show ads based on content, none of these laws would have been necessary in the first place.

Its possible you will have eu only fb, Asia only fb which would not be such a bad thing. Not only would the new entities break monopoly, but also be more compliant than haughty American tech companies with their billions of daus

Now now, they don’t “steal” it, they just “collect” it. All this data falls off the back of a truck, they just pick it up.

"That information was just resting in our servers"

Isn't the main function of Facebook to allow users to upload or enter contents for others to view?

It seems like people here tend to think of ad profiles as the only data that matters, but Facebook "collects" messages you post and photos you upload, just like most email services "collect" all your emails. This kind of data is far more sensitive than your ad profile.

> This kind of data is far more sensitive than your ad profile.

Yes and no.

certainly people share and post sensitive stuff on Facebook. But Facebook knowing I've visited certain categories of websites because those sites have a Facebook pixel or they're running a third party widget that has a FB pixel is historically a much more opaque form of data collection.

The valuable data they have is to build a model of your personality and emotional dynamics, where they can control the input, what you see in timeline, and watch the output, the mood revealed by your subsequent actions and posts. Knowing what stimulus will upset you enough to donate or share a given type of content is pretty valuable, even compared to knowing you need a new laptop.

The main function of Facebook is to spy on people, the providers of the data. All data gathered is then sold to paying customers. They make all their money this way. If they only had a graph with persons and relations between these persons and did nothing else with it than show this to these people, maybe we were not facing this discussion now.

The cynic in me would say: store all data on EU soil ;)

Indeed, just like movie piracy is not stealing.

This comment is very biased, who are you to speak for all facebook users?

For one thing, Facebook allows me to stay connected with my family in another country. I'm infinity grateful to it for that, and I'm ready to exchange getting this amazing free service for my very personal information. No one stole this data from me, I'm happy with this arrangement.

Same with other the services: Google's, amazon, and what not... Hell, the progress all these amazing services brought made my live on earth a heaven really (not sarcastic)!

I'm personaly not afraid of big tech, imho they compete with each other, they rise and fall, let them be. I'm afraid of regulation that incentivizes lobbying, kill competition, and create long term monopolies.

They do not compete with each other (potential competitors just get bought out), and already do lobbying in vast quantities. And there's nothing about inter-country communication which requires Facebook's data mining, inasmuch as there are already network links between them which Facebook uses.

I’d view “buying competitors” as a sign of “competing”.

Otherwise, in the Middle Ages, “European kingdoms don’t fight wars, they just conquer one another”

Possibly, but it's not the sort of competition which leads to more choice and better outcomes for consumers.

The math showing free market equilibrium being the most prosperous depends on a large number of entities on both the selling and the buying end.

Maybe, maybe not. Consumers would be analogous to consumers of kingdoms, so it all sort of falls apart.

Anyway, if the competition is not an ends unto itself it would seem a more direct argument can be made.

i can think of a couple of sad examples where buyout resulted in drop of quality or even dying off. it's often used to kill competition and not the other way.

The problem here is that the majority of users don't actually have informed consent. They don't know what is happening. They think it's just being served ads or something and are like "OK, I can accept the ads in exchange for the service" - what they don't know is FB is passing data to and from data brokers, purchasing your credit card purchases, matching your phone numbers against real life data, then leaking that data to unintended recipients via API or otherwise.

I wouldn't care if I was served isolated display ads, even targetted based on my entered data.

There are plenty of services that would serve that role - staying connected with your family - at least as good as FB does. That's the part most people are missing, I think: that FB doesn't really have that much to offer, apart from its market share. And, because of FB monopoly, pretty much anything that hurts them is good for the market, ie everyone, in particular their users.

You have been able to do that since email existed. You would just pay a few cents extra a month to your ISP for them to run the servers. Their business model wasn't data mining and behavioural manipulation.

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