

Facebook privacy challenge attracts 25,000 users - onion2k
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-28677667

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sillysaurus3
_Among the allegations are that Facebook broke EU privacy laws by introducing:

Graph Search - a facility allowing users to find out about other members'
activities on the social network

External website tracking - monitoring members through the Like buttons
embedded into third-party webpages

Big data analysis - the ability to gain insights into Facebook members' by
data-crunching the billions of interactions people have with the site every
year_

Those arguments don't seem very compelling. The internet is driven by ads.
Companies which don't optimize their ad pipeline tend to die. The best way to
optimize your ad pipeline is to collect data and then act on it.

Where is the line between optimizing an ad pipeline and violating privacy?

~~~
NotAtWork
> Where is the line between optimizing an ad pipeline and violating privacy?

Right at the start.

Of course, the allegation was that Facebook broke privacy _laws_ , and not
just that they violated people's privacy, so your response is a total non
sequitur: you're talking about how it's good business to violate privacy,
which doesn't address at all whether it's good business to break the law, nor
whether these laws draw a meaningful boundary.

Unless you meant that anything which is in the business' interest to do
shouldn't be illegal for it...?

~~~
sillysaurus3
Comments like these make HN not very fun anymore.

 _Unless you meant that anything which is in the business ' interest to do
shouldn't be illegal for it...?_

It's tempting to leave a sarcastic reply.

Just because a lawsuit has been filed doesn't mean any law has been broken.
Would you cite which EU privacy law Facebook broke, and how they broke it?

The article lists the central claims of the lawsuit, which don't seem to
reference any particular law. They also seem to be arguing from moral grounds
rather than strictly legal grounds. That's why I said they don't seem
compelling.

And then I get accused of being both a bad commenter (my response is a "non
sequitur"?) and claiming that businesses should violate privacy (when in fact
I asked _where is the line_ between a privacy violation and a legitimate
business practice). Classy.

~~~
DanBC
> Would you cite which EU privacy law Facebook broke, and how they broke it?

Simplistically: The EU Privacy Directive; and it was broken by keeping data
for too long and doing stuff that they didn't have user permission for.

More complicatedly: What ever country the lawsuit is taking place in will have
implemented the EU Privacy directive, and so that country's law is the actual
law that's been broken.

And also more complicatedly: Just having permission via checkbox might not be
enough; the EU strongly prefers "privacy by default" where the user has to
specifically check a box to lose that bit of privacy.

Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October
1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of
personal data and on the free movement of such data [http://eur-
lex.europa.eu/legal-content/en/ALL/;ELX_SESSIONID...](http://eur-
lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/en/ALL/;ELX_SESSIONID=PDyNTjhbnGTWSNnJ5wGmVr01nvygLty2bt7kV721yqrRdHHqzLRv!183635007?uri=CELEX:31995L0046)

Factsheet: EU Privacy Directive and Social Networks
[http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-
protection/document/review2...](http://ec.europa.eu/justice/data-
protection/document/review2012/factsheets/3_en.pdf)

------
owenversteeg
25,000 * 500 = 12.5 million euros. According to this [0] article, that would
take 9.28 hours for Facebook to earn back. I don't think one lawsuit this size
every 10 hours is viable. There needs to be a bigger force to make people
consider moving away from Facebook.

Also, the image [1] in the article is hilarious.

[0] [http://www.thewire.com/technology/2014/08/lets-calculate-
how...](http://www.thewire.com/technology/2014/08/lets-calculate-how-much-
money-facebook-lost-on-todays-outage/375462/)

[1]
[http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/76780000/jpg/_76780123...](http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/76780000/jpg/_76780123_1d5251c2-a507-449a-a910-a79f7448e2e2.jpg)

------
sahyee
Eh I just don't see this going anywhere. The arguments don't seem strong to me
- Big data analysis itself is not against EU Privacy laws and I just don't see
how they can frame it in a way that would convince judges otherwise. Even so,
the overall penalty to Facebook would be just a drop in the bucket. The
financial and reputational penalty that Facebook would incur from a loss here
just doesn't scale well at all.

------
traeregan
"Facebook privacy challenge attracts 25,000 people who want 500 euros for
doing basically nothing"

~~~
tomp
Isn't that an argument you could use for all torts? (E.g. the California tech
companies salaries one?)

------
higherpurpose
It should be at least 2 million people to teach Facebook a lesson.

~~~
lfender6445
People get what they sign up for - Everyone knows that facebook is a
powerhouse of private data and yet they still continue to use it.

If you don't like how FB handles your data, don't use it.

~~~
Igglyboo
I'd say everyone is a bit high, people that post on HN for sure and most
technical users but I doubt that the average facebook user knows or cares
about any of that.

~~~
lfender6445
I'd argue they've been in the news enough for people to know better.

