Slashdot Mirror
EU Targets Facebook's Ad System
redletterdave writes "The European Commission plans to put a stop to the way Facebook gathers information about its users, including their political opinions, religious beliefs, whereabouts and sexual preferences, and how the social network sells that information for commercial purposes. A new EC Directive aims to ban targeted advertising unless users specifically allow it, and to amend the current European data protection laws to ensure consistency in how offending sites are dealt with across the EU. If the European Commission has its way, Facebook would suffer big losses in advertising dollars that fund its site, which would further damage the company's plans to go public next year. Facebook has defended itself, claiming its advertisers target wide demographics like age and location, rather than specific individuals. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company denies outright that it misuses or mishandles user information."
EU Parliament statement about that here.
Seems like real, sudden outbreak of common sense. Go EU!. I am moving to it next year.
The EC is a toothless entity with no legal power. Why should FB even care about what they say? Where it matters are the laws of the respective country.
Those Europeans doesn't understand the right of an American company to do what they want wherever they want
Is that hard?
It's not just Facebook, many other companies like Google do this. But although this regulation has good intentions, like all attempts at regulating the Internet it will be counterproductive and unenforceable. The Internet is based on anarchy, that's what made it big and drives it today. Securing their data is the duty of the users.
... steps are taken to ensure that Big Brother doesn't get too big.
While here in the US, those who most love to cite Orwell also tend to want there to be no limits to what corporations can do, even when it's the corporations (far more so than the government) that are filling the power niches.
Check your premises.
Don't post stuff to facebook that you wouldn't want public.
I'm kidding, that's insane - who could possibly follow such a lunatic policy?
To understand facebook it might help to use google as an analogy.
Google is an advertising company that happens to provide services that inspire people to see the ads that they sell.
Facebook is a data mining company that happens to provide services that inspire people to provide the data that they sell.
They both offer advertisements, the both do data mining. In many ways the companies are very very similar. The biggest difference is the interface that is presented to the public. They both offer most of their services in exchange for what they need to sell to make a living.
If you don't want to pay the price than don't take the service they offer. Or, just click the buttons to avoid telling the world about the things you'd rather the whole world not know.
/not a facebook fan and thinks people waste way too much time on it
Only allow people to use their accounts if they agree to allow target advertisement... That would almost guarantee the majority will keep targeted advertisement over losing their accounts.
Anybody honestly believe such a law will have much effect on a site like facebook? This law would be more effective against sites where there isn't an incentive to keep an account. Of course, they could have a clause in the law that forbids such requiring permission to have an account but kinda doubt they thought of that.
and bui-ldin6 is
Adblock+ works perfectly well for facebook just like it does for most other sites. I suppose an opt-in system is better, but adblock covers pretty much all websites while this half measure covers only facebook.
Yay for the Nanny State! You know, you can just skip adding all of your personal information in there if you choose. Individual responsibility. What a concept!
The best way to avoid facebook getting your info:
DO NOT SIGN UP FOR FACEBOOK.
Yes, they have alternate ways of tracking you and getting your information- but if you don't sign up for facebook you get more spare time, and less privacy stolen.
If you already are a member- quit now before you give away some other facet of your life.
Honestly- we all know how evil they are by now- so why do people keep using them? Is it really worth giving away every piece of information of your life just to play crappy games (that most slashdotters could write a better version of in an evening).
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Seriously. If you aren't paying for it, you aren't the customer. You're the product being sold.
Facebook will simply solve this by presenting their users with an annoying popup that only goes away if you agree (opt-in) to the new EULA.
So there's not much significance to all of this.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
The press loves to get people all worked up about data mining. Data mining itself is not an invasion of privacy. At that point you are just an anonymous set of attributes. The purpose of data mining is to understand and discover the relationships that exist among different data. It's an analysis performed on a large body of data from a large population or it doesn't work. Your personal identity is not important or useful for its purpose. Targeted advertising isn't an invasion either even if it uses information you've provided along with relationships discovered in data mining to try to put something in front of you that you may be interested in. That's actually a service. Facebook or Google are capable of providing targeted ads without providing your information to the advertisers or any other third party. The merely need to match the ads they display on your page to your characteristics. Do you think Google shares your gmail e-mails with others in order to target advertising to you based on an email's content? An invasion of privacy happens when without your permission the information you've entered is sold or given to others to use. That is what should require an "opt in" from the user. That isn't an internet specific thing either. Every company or institution that collects information from you as part of a transaction should be so restricted.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
And there's plenty of middle ground in-between: Anyone who posts their political affiliation, sexual preference, religion, graduation date and place, home town, phone number (PHONE NUMBER!?), voluntarily, does so with the specific intention of letting others see it. Things like purchases and browsing habits, personal and unsolicited data mining are somewhat involuntary, and are legitimate privacy issues. Things like getting political ads because you posted your political party affiliation on the page of a public, ubiquitous site, are not legitimate privacy concerns, because you have already chosen to make them public. They wouldn't be on facebook, otherwise: it's not as though you need to put it on paper to remind yourself of these bits of information, and 'close friends and family' would likely already know these details, so on some level it's pretty obvious that you want people to know these things about you easily. That includes corporations. Don't like it, then don't post it. The only thing facebook requires of you is name, age, and an email address. And I've never gotten one bit of spam or directed mail to that address.
this is an interesting perspective - TED Talk last week
http://www.tedxbrussels.eu/2011/speakers/kaliya_hamlin.html
And not going on sites that have a Facebook like button. Or are somehow affiliated with Facebook without telling you.
Yeah, I was buying cell-batteries the other day and the retailer wanted me to enter a facebook user and password so it could automatically insert a facebook comment that I had purchased batteries from them.
I remember thinking - WhyTF would I do that? Who on earth would want to post mundane information about what they buy online? IRS would looove to get a hold of their facebook profile no doubt.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
1. Change the terms and conditions to include "I agree to X".
2. On the next login, show a "The terms and conditions changed" pop-up with miles of tiny text and a big "I agree" button next to the "Close my account". (Note how it doesn't say "delete".)
3. Auto-logout everyone who hasn't logged out in the last 24 hours.
4. Wait.
5. PROFIT.
(But at least the EU is stumbling in the right direction... this time.)
and don't associate with any one who uses Facebook
Does anybody believe this any longer?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
When rights are revokable, they are useless. "If you want our service, you must agree to give up all your rights to sue, your right to due process, and your right to privacy." Well, then they aren't rights. When you must "explicitly" give permission, they will just add a single splash page that people will click through to get the service, then they will do the "illegal" things as before. The only "cure" is the anti-libertarian solution of preventing that contract. The person can agree to the boilerplate ToS, but then the site must then explicitly request for every sharing, and when denied, not retaliate against the user.
Personally, I think the best compromise is a requirement that the user be notified on each and every instance of sharing, along with an opt-out for the information both in the primary database and the one it was transferred to. That was a failure for CAN-SPAM, where they can store your email forever and were never required by law to remove it from a list, unless they emailed you. So the list would be held by company A, who would then sell the list to people. That sold list would email you, and you could opt-out of that one, but the actual list you are on that generated that email was legally shielded, as the email came from a secondary source, protecting them from having to ever cull the master list.
Learn to love Alaska
If you study carefully what is really happening in the EU you will realise that their economic crisis is an essential and cleverly engineered part of a much bigger, and more worrying plan. And the reason the British object so vociferously to the EU can be clearly seen in the current disgraceful goings-on in Greece and Italy. If the British Prime Minister were turfed out of office by the unelected Commissars of the EU and replaced by one of their card-carrying stooges I suspect there would be blood in the streets. And rightly so.
The EU is not a kindly old uncle looking after the people, it is a totalitarian state, increasingly controlled by Germany, that subjugates the masses with bureaucracy and bullshit rather than bombs and bullets. It has never been given a mandate by the people to govern, yet it does so with an autocratic arrogance that is quite breathtaking to those who have lived in it. It is controlled by a self-anointed European political elite who have never been elected by the people, who are in no way, shape or form accountable to the people, and who are building a rigidly centralised, dictatorial superstate for the sole purpose of boosting their own importance and power in the world; and they are using the people as economic cannon-fodder. The only good thing to come out of the EU is a one-way flight to New Zealand.
Not everything needs a customer... (unless you count customers as those who also contribute)
Unfortunately a lot of scamware tends to put people off the concept that there are plenty of good things out there that are clean and free.
Is it good that so generic social networking site is run by an advertising company? Facebook's importance in people's lives has risen so high that maybe it should be run by some party with no financial interests. Or for humankind it should be recommended for everyone to move to something like Diaspora.
I use them mostly because anyone I want to talk to has moved away and that's the only way to get in touch. But also, as has been said on /. before, I have more control over my profile. Right now Facebook thinks I live in Timbuktu (it's pretty amusing to post something and see "near Timbuktu" on it), rather then being forced to use algorithms to determine where I am, which would probably be pretty accurate.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
There are some people who post on facebook what they ate for breakfast and when they go to the bathroom. I'm sure they'd love to be able to automatically post when they buy something.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
Also, remember to draw up a contract forcing your friends not to tag you. I hear that most unsigned people have a fairly comprehensive profile based on information provided by others. Not the same, but still
Let me guess... you answer is get rid of every friend that signed up for facebook (and live in a glorious cave)? Reality has to set in somewhere. I minimize my exposure to facebook by only allowing facebook to run java script when I want to use every once in a few weeks (amazing how many sites pop up, facebook.com was blocked from running java script... Just amazing). But I won't delete my profile just yet.
That is funny, sounds like television evangelists, give us your love, open your heart to facebook, and facebook will want you to stay to keep up with us, and facebook knows you are a sucker and have many friends as well as money to play Zygna games, money that facebook did not provided to you, and facebook wants you donate about 500-3000 more users, as well as spending vast amounts of money towards Zygna to help us spread your word. Mean while they are driving high end cars, buying expensive clothing, they own a 300,000 private jet, and 2-4 homes along beach front property.. lol
Yeah it would be a shame if facebook went under, I see total world collapse from such a thing... lol Of course I am been sarcastic!!!!!!!
Socialism contrary to what the average american think , is not about dictature, it is about social contract, and sharing resource (think health care). *somne* communist regime went all dictature and big brother, but it is not a feature per see of socialism. Case in point the most socialistic regime in europe are democratic.
From that point of view, a true socialist regime will always be less big brother than a facist pro corporatist regime. The USA is really on the facist side , no matter what the consitution and amendement says. Look at how pro corporation law are , lobbyism and the rest, it becomes quite clear.
Frakly, I think you are screwed in the US. Too many sheep accepting bad law fatalistically rather than fight them. It will have to get much worst, violentely so , before it can get better. But , hey, as one of your own said : sometimes the tree of liberty has to be refreshed with the blood of the tyrant.
I'd rather have adverts that are targeted to my personal interests and 'likes' than be bombarded with irrelevant crap that I'm not at all interested in. Do I want to have farmville adverts showing up on my FB page? No - I'm not a teenage girl. Do I want to be notified when ebuyer or have a sale on? Yes. What's more relevant to me; A band I like is playing a concert in my area, or, A rapper who makes my ears bleed is doing a gig in a different country?
Say what you want about Facebook - but I like how their adverts quite often for something I'm genuinely interested in. IMO, that's what ALL advertising should be like. No matter how many times I see the Always adverts on TV - I'm never going to buy sanitary pads.
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I wish I never created a profile.
this is such an invasion of your privacy.
It's simple. The EU is similar to the US Federal government. The member countries are subject to EU law where applicable, they have signed treaties to that effect.
If a member country does not apply the relevant law correctly, charges will be brought before the The Court of Justice of the European Union.
If the member state loses the case it will be subject to punitive measures until it corrects the situation. There is a lot to lose for the member country in question.
I have a better idea, why not just turn on your connection to the internet.
Just because there's a better idea doesn't mean new ideas cannot be created.
Why is opt-in such an issue for people to grasp (not saying you do not?
Zuckerberg, how about instead of denying what you aren't doing with private data you go ahead and publish a detailed list of what you *are* doing with it? No fair being nefarious and keeping some of it secret either!