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Comment by daveman | Hacker News Reader

It's fascinating to watch how tech companies react to restrictive EU privacy laws. Many of the EU requirements (e.g. 'right to be forgotten', mandatory opt-in for cookies) could become a real hindrance for companies that want to build intelligent services and minimized user experiences.

Call me crazy, but it seems like when you get to use a free service or website that costs many millions of dollars to develop, giving the company access to your data is a fairly small price to pay.

I'm waiting for one of these legal actions to cause a company like Facebook to just shut down their service in the local area, and leave a landing page with the email addresses of all the politicians who provoked the outage.

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>Call me crazy, but it seems like when you get to use a free service or website that costs many millions of dollars to develop, giving the company access to your data is a fairly small price to pay.

Except I don't use Facebook. I don't use any Google service beyond the occasional visit to Youtube, either. They still try to get my data. The amount of filters, blacklists and blockers you need to be safe from these leeches is utterly ridiculous. This has nothing to do with a free internet anymore.

If you consider handing you're data over to a company a "payment" for their services, then what Facebook, Google and all these other Big Data companies are doing to the people who don't use their services, yet are still tracked, is nothing short of theft, and this needs to stop.

Besides, most people aren't even really aware of this "payment". They can't make an informed choice - and it's of course not in the interest of Google or Facebook to educate their users about this, even though it's their responsility, nay, duty - and that needs to be made the law, because otherwise they sure as hell won't move a finger.

And frankly, I don't give even half a shit for "intelligent services and minimized user experiences" if they come at the cost of essential liberties. I don't think I need to reproduce Franklin's famous quote here - it applies to convenience just the same as to safety.

People in the EU (and Germany in particular) don't care for massive privately held databases that can be used to target individuals. They have had enough bad experiences with secret police forces, and that's why there are strict limits on data gathering and retention.

I think you are very wrong about that.

Populist politicians, confused old people and outraged nerds don’t care for massive, privately held databases. The rest do.

If the politicians are both populist and successful that suggests their platform is supported by a wide swath of the population.

It is quite possible that everyone in Germany is either a confused old person, an outraged nerd, or a populist politician trying to cash in on their senses. But I doubt that's exactly what you meant. ;-)

> People in the EU (and Germany in particular) ... have had enough bad experiences with secret police forces,

How many of these secret police forces were private? How many were govt police forces?

Politicians grandstand about the evils of companies, but the actual killing and torturing people is done by semi-popular govts.

"Politicians grandstand about the evils of companies, but the actual killing and torturing people is done by semi-popular govts."

Well, that's true, and is the reason you can't trust facebook, as the patriot act gives the US government all the data that private American companies have, without you being notified.

> but the actual killing and torturing people is done by semi-popular govts.

Like the Mafia and Church of Scientology. And Blackwater. The East India Trading Company, or Coca Cola assassinating Labor Leaders in Columbia. IBM helped the Nazi's build the accounting machinery used by the concentration camps, requiring IBM to be well aware what was going on.

In some cases Corporations pay governments to do their dirty work. Sometimes the Government pays the corporation. Other times the corporation becomes the government. Sometimes the corporation just doesn't care. Regardless, can we please put aside this fiction that all the serious evils of the world are perpetrated by governments despite the best efforts of angelic businessmen? Pretending that as long as we keep the government in check all will be fine is idiocy and ignorance of the highest order. Excess power in any concentrated location is potentially problematic, regardless if it's held by 'private' or 'public' sectors. Those are labels for groups of people, nothing more.

"A Single Death is a Tragedy; a Million Deaths is a Statistic"

> Regardless, can we please put aside this fiction that all the serious evils of the world are perpetrated by governments despite the best efforts of angelic businessmen?

No one is suggesting that business is angelic.

However, whenever someone points out that govts kill lots of people, govt apologists leap up to say "corps have killed too", ignoring the differenc in orders of magnitude.

Mote, beam and all that.

> Those are labels for groups of people, nothing more.

Not so fast. Those groups have very different behaviors and motivations.

The worst that you can say about a company is that it will try to make money from you and might take some action to stop you from interfering with its attempts to make money.

Govts regularly commit mass murder for basically no reason.

> Govts regularly commit mass murder for basically no reason.

Govts have reasons, one of the most common is to protect or improve the status quo for the leaders. Not very different from companies.

> Not very different from companies.

You're ignoring the orders of magnitude.

Scale is a difference that you have to ignore to apologize for govts.

I agree and worse is that most a lot of them actually believe 'the people' actually have a say in this while they don't. Well, at least not with voting. That was not the point though; governments are not doing the stuff they do without reason; there is a reason. It's just not what you would expect and hope from something as massive as a government.

What does "private" mean in this scenario? In most dictatorships, secret police forces may be run by the state, but they serve the private interests that run the state.

> they serve the private interests that run the state.

Oh really? What private interests ran the USSR? China under Mao? The killing fields of Cambodia.

10s of millions of people killed....

The distinction you're making between private and public is hardly relevant. The gestapo, stasi and FBI are, for all intents and purposes, not very different from private companies trying to perpetuate their own success and maximize their power/profits. The only major difference is that governments own a monopoly on the use of force, making them slightly more dangerous in a physical sense - but not more dangerous in a general 'can cause us a lot of harm' sense (especially since governments are easier to topple than private companies).

> They have had enough bad experiences with secret police forces, and that's why there are strict limits on data gathering and retention.

Ha ha. The successors to the Stasi are meant to ignore these laws. The purpose is to keep the technologies out of the hands of the Hans Q. Public.

Remember, the Stasi were first and foremost a populist movement, just like the Nazis before them. You don't get an informer in every family by tyrrany, you get it by willing collaboration, and the Germans have an authority worshipping streak a mile wide.

Remember, the Stasi were first and foremost a populist movement, just like the Nazis before them. You don't get an informer in every family by tyrrany, you get it by willing collaboration

what? you're talking about eastern germany, with the wall that kept people from running away.

the Germans have an authority worshipping streak a mile wide.

what about the americans who move to berlin because they can hardly breathe in the USA anymore? you're operating under obsolete assumptions.

You're coming from the assumption that Germany got better rather than the US got worse. There are still many freer countries than Germany.

"You're coming from the assumption that Germany got better"

No, I live in it. And it did. Just think the green or now the pirate party - unthinkable decades ago.

But where did I claim Germany is super free and the best, ever? I was simply responding the claim that Germans are authoritarian/obedient by nature - which, ironically, strikes me as racist - and was taking a wild jab, hoping the poster I replied to might come from the US, and simply said Germany is way more free (and dare I say, laid back) in some respects than the US currently is.

That's all, you can dispute that if you want; but how do "all other countries" come into play here?

What I was inferring from your comment was

What about the americans who move to berlin because they can hardly breathe in the USA anymore? Since this happens, it shows that Berlin is a haven for people who feel oppressed.

That was my interpretation. You also said that the assumption of German strictness was outdated, implying that Germans have become more relaxed. Working with that interpretation, my point was that maybe Germany didn't get better, but the US got worse which by default makes Germany look better. I then implied that using Berlin as the capital of the free doesn't work, since there are more free places even in the EU. Basically: maybe Germany hasn't become more relaxed, but other places have become more strict. If I was looking to escape the tyranny of the US, I wouldn't think of going back home to Germany. The authoritarian nature of the US vs Germany reside on two entirely different and almost incomparable planes.

> The authoritarian nature of the US vs Germany reside on two entirely different and almost incomparable planes.

The US is not authoritarian, we are governed by a coalition of tyrants that have coopted the lawful government. The pendulum will swing back any year now when the shiny wears off Washington, D.C.

As for the other commenter's claim about Berlin, imagine this thought experiment: the self-proclaimed Messiah moves to Berlin, marries a gaggle of 16 year old brides, gets them all pregnant, and homeschools the offspring in riflery and Scientology. Would German officials have a violent allergic reaction? Yes! Because it goes outside the privileges they have deigned to grant their flocks. In the US that would be considered bizarre but not a proper matter for state intervention.

> it seems like when you get to use a free service or website that costs many millions of dollars to develop, giving the company access to your data is a fairly small price to pay.

Unfortunately, using Facebook is hardly a free choice anymore. I personally don't use it, but I have no delusions about the cost that comes with resisting. You miss out on events, news and connections. And because of Facebook's ubiquity, no other social network is a complete substitute. Some employers and dating advice columnists even find it "suspicious" when someone isn't on Facebook:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/08/06/beware-te...

So there's a lot of pressure to use it. And while you can choose not to have an account, you can't choose to live in a world where Facebook doesn't exist. Even if you never touch the site, people can take photos of you and write status updates about you and post them there, and that affects your privacy. A sociologist I follow has written a good (slightly more theoretical) analysis of this problem:

http://thesocietypages.org/cyborgology/2012/05/21/a-new-priv...

As for giving away your data being a "small price to pay", we'll have to disagree on that. Some people value their privacy more than others. And due to the above, we're limited in our ability to make an individual decision to preserve that privacy. Hence, I applaud the strict EU privacy laws and wish we had stronger privacy protections in the US as well.

The laws are "restrictive" in the sense that they don't like opt-out mechanisms. They place few if any restrictions what a company can do if the user actively opts in.

If the personal data price is such a small to pay, convincing your users of that shouldn't be too much of a problem?

"I'm waiting for one of these legal actions to cause a company like Facebook to just shut down their service in the local area, and leave a landing page with the email addresses of all the politicians who provoked the outage."

Hahaha. You are thinking like an American, not as an European.

If facebook is shut down in Europe you will be surprised at the outcome. People here trust the government and distrust companies. In USA it is the opposite.

email addresses of the politicians? :-DDDDDDDDDDDDD

No, seriously, you need to live some time in Europe to understand the culture here.

As someone who lives in Europe, I would like to point out that the above most definitely doesnt speak for the entire continent.

Of course, but it is true that people in Europe tend to trust their governments more than private companies.

As a european, I trust neither. Trust? I mean really, one of them is only caring about monetizing everything possible, the other has its own (sometimes mysterious) motives, why should I trust anyone but my friends and family? I think the question itself is just a play on emotions, people with bad experiences with either is going to say they trust the other more, but all in all I don't think any sensible person trusts the government or companies in the true meaning of the word.

As someone who lived both in Europe (in 2 countries) and the USA (but I'm European), this is of course a very broad statement but one that is generally true.

The average American distrust his government far more than an average "European".

>People here trust the government and distrust companies.

Still haven't learned much have they.

I think they have. I elect the government, I don't elect companies.

> giving the company access to your data is a fairly small price to pay.

If we're going to think of privacy invasions as "fees" for the service, let's consider another scenario. Imagine facebook was a paid service and you gave them your credit card. You had already consented to a price of $3, however without telling you they added a new service and changed the price to $5. Automatically you're billed for the bigger amount next month. If you don't want the new service you have to opt-out. Would that be equally okay?

It may be true that FB is making more use of the data than you might have anticipated, but you can argue that's also the risk you take when you use a free service (do you ever really know the full extent a service will use your information, despite what they say in their lengthy EULA?). The funny thing is that in many cases, the user gains more value from the system than originally expected too, due to novel applications of existing data (e.g. timeline).

This would be really interesting. But judging by the notorious German copycat startup industry, they would most likely develop a replica of that site.

On a more serious note: I noticed recently that a massive amount of music related videos are blocked on YouTube for all German IP addresses. Instead they show a notice, that the German music-rights organization is preventing this video to be played, i.e. Google has already entered the naming and shaming game. But there seems to be relatively little outcry and people apparently just accept it.

I guess people from outside of the US are already used to the fact that US based companies are often not acting in their best interest.

Errm, you do realise the "local area" of the European Union comprises of 27 members states/countries and according to Wikipedia:

With a combined population of over 500 million inhabitants, or 7.3% of the world population, the EU, in 2011, generated a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of 17.6 trillion US dollars, representing approximately 20% of the global GDP when measured in terms of purchasing power parity.

I'd like to see which company has the balls to pull out of that market.

Absolutely, thought about this a lot. With the right apologetic message I suspect you'd cause outrage. It's a fine line, though.

Many of the EU requirements (e.g. 'right to be forgotten', mandatory opt-in for cookies)

Just to note: The "right to be forgotten" is not EU law yet. There are some changes to the EU Data Protection law coming up, that's one of them, but it's not EU law now.

Same here! They'd be heroes overnight.

Who? The politicians?

Indeed, 17 year olds don't vote in most countries. Their inconvenience is of little concern to me.

It is the epiotome of arrogance to serve your own interests by trampling those of others, regardless of how annoying you find their demographic to be. By this attitude, 17 year olds are perfectly within their rights to say "their privacy is of little concern to me" about your age group, and act accordingly.

sorry, didn't mean it in a "racist" or "doesn't affect me" kind of way, just that they are minor children, and will thank the adults later for taking care of their long term interests.

Perhaps, but I'd wager that the copyright lobby uses the same justification for their own anti-consumer actions.

I believe one must be careful not to use the same means, even though improving the privacy of Facebook users and non-users alike is a worthy end.

I'm 28, but on behalf of all those who are legally powerless and who have other people 'looking after their longterm best interests' we'd prefer you didn't.

Yeah, I get that from one of my teenage daughters, as well. Alas, it's the one who most needs to listen up.

At 28, you darn well better be taking care of yourself. However, I suspect you have not had to deal with adolescent children yet.

It's one thing to take care of your own children. It's entirely another to change the law to "take care of" everyone else's. The second requires far greater justification and consent from those who would be affected by the law (those 17 year olds who are a year away from voting, for example).

In all of Austria and already some parts of Germany, the voting age is 16.

As a German, i'm glad that our governments care about privacy laws. Besides the ridiculousness of the Street View debacle most privacy laws in Germany are right where they should be, bordering on not strong enough.

Facebook clearly behaved intransparent and outright unfriendly with regards to data protection, therefor its fair to come down that hard on the service.

Or many people would just go "meh, guess I'll use something else then". Facebook is just not that big of a deal to most people, it's pretty easy to provide a similar service. Facebook knows this and wouldn't take a chance alienating the whole European population, many of whom are already itching to switch to something else, just looking for an excuse.

exactly. let's face it (hurr hurr), the one big asset of facebook.. is that everybody uses it.

or can you name even just one other feature nobody else does better (and please don't let it be farmville). I couldn't think of one so far, any input would be appreciated..

does anybody do all of the features of Facebook as well as Facebook does?

well, if they don't do a single feature right, then of course the sum of that isn't great either. so far nobody mentioned a single thing facebook is good at..

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