
German Regulators Just Outlawed Facebook's Whole Ad Business - muraiki
https://www.wired.com/story/germany-facebook-antitrust-ruling/
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sctb
Recent discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19104098](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19104098)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19105272](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19105272)

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JumpCrisscross
> _Authorities haven’t done a good job of articulating why privacy is an
> antitrust issue. Here, the German regulator makes it clear. ‘The FCO’s
> theory is that Facebook’s dominance is what allows it to impose on users
> contractual terms that require them to allow Facebook to track them all
> over,’ Khan says. ‘When there is a lack of competition, users accepting
> terms of service are often not truly consenting. The consent is a fiction.‘_

Huh, a legal theory linking Facebook’s market position to consumer harm.

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matco11
> According to the FCO, Facebook had 32 million monthly active users in
> Germany at the end of last year, amounting to a market share of more than 80
> percent.

I am not sure I understand: that’s Facebook penetration Facebook
accounts/adult digital population), not their market share - which would be
Facebook accounts/(sum of accounts of all social media, including Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, ...Spotify)

> The regulator argues this dominance gives it jurisdiction to oversee the
> company’s data collection practices.

...and why only the data collection practices? Why would the other parts of
the T&C of Facebook be not subject to it? Why should consumers not be forced
to accept just the data collection practices of the T&C? Shouldn’t the German
antitrust then, logically, prevent Facebook from enforcing their entire T&C?
So, large companies now cannot have T&C enforced even when they do not cause
economic damage to the market? Is there an economic gain for a person to join
Facebook? My friend does not have a Facebook account, I don't think she is
poorer because of it. ...because if there is no economic harm, I don’t see why
the antitrust office would have jurisdiction. Maybe the gain/harm is not
economic, maybe the gain from a Facebook account is not economic, it’s
“social”. Well isn’t then the “social” gain greater when Facebook offers a
unified experience (across Facebook, Instagram and WhatsUp)? How does the
antitrust office action make any sense? What am I missing?

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benj111
"...and why only the data collection practices? "

Doesn't it make sense to look at only the specific bits that are causing harm,
rather than stepping in to completely rewrite a contract. Governments on both
sides of the Atlantic rule certain contract terms illegal (eg no competes),
the presence of those terms doesn't invalidate the whole contract generally
though.

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pmontra
Even if FB stops tracking Germans so much (and hopefully all the other EU
countries) they'll still be able to sell ads. FB is where people go and where
ads are more likely to be seen.

FB might discover that it makes the same amount of money at a lower cost.

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Guano
UE is going too far away, first the cookie popup show, now this shit. I may be
wrong, but they have no big internet companies, don't they?

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empath75
Perhaps ‘big internet companies’ are not a good thing to have.

