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."
Those Europeans doesn't understand the right of an American company to do what they want wherever they want
Seems like real, sudden outbreak of common sense. Go EU!. I am moving to it next year.
It should be much cheaper to move there next year.
Assuming the EU exists.... Hope your talking about Germany...
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.
If they keep this up I might join you. The USA will probably make facebook accounts mandatory so the NSA can track us better.
Yes despite all the terrible press the EU gets especially in the UK, there are some nice things coming out of it like forcing mobile phone companies to all use mini-usb chargers. Sometimes I wish England would stop dicking about in EU and actually commit to something bigger than themselves for reasons other than personal greed.
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.
You don't have a clue about the EC if you claim that. Stop reading the Daily Mail and start reading actual newspapers.
I dont click links here for obvious reasons.
To offset political mods, replace Flamebait with Insightful.
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.
Yea, you just responded to an obvious goatse troll like it was a real post.
He just announced that if that goatse site is kept alive ("If they keep it up") he might also become a goatse troll ("I might join you.") :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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
Getting one thing right once in a while does not make up for the lack of accountability, NIMBY syndrome, waste and general stupidity that the EU manages to achieve. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, assuming that it's analog. IMO it deserves the terrible press that it gets, particularly in the UK.
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.
Yeah. Too bad you are all bankrupt and the Euro is collapsing.
Oh. Wait...
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
According to your logic, we should get rid of the police, the justice and the military, because protecting yourself and punishing perpetrators is solely your responsibility.
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
Does anybody believe this any longer?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You do realize the only reason the UK are doing fine today is because they took a lot of EU money a couple of years ago when they were in a crisis and the rest of Europe was not?
There are 27 countries. Not everyone can benefit from it at the same time. The EU exists to regularize things between member countries, so that they can balance each other out. Sometimes a country is at the bottom of the balance, sometimes at the top.
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
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.
I've chosen Brazil...
I see you are also woefully ignorant of the EU and its workings.
I'm not about to make a statement like GP did, mostly because I don't believe that the EU will collapse anytime soon, but I also am ignorant of its workings. So care to enlighten us?
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
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 see you are also woefully ignorant of the EU and its workings.
Only someone woefully ignorant of the EU and its workings could expect it not to collapse.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.
Check your premises.
Which is great until countries start actively gaming the system, spending wildly because "of course we'll get bailed out". A bit less cycnically, it's easy for a political leader to give money to the people, and wait on austerity until it's externally imposed, at which point it's not the leader's fault, it's those evil EU baddies. Which could all still work unless most of the countries happen to need a bailout all at the same time, which is pretty much where we are today - it's doubtful there's enough strength left in the member countries that are doing well to help all the countries that need it.
It's just as messed up in the US of course: we'll keep spending like drunken sailors as long as we possibly can, avoiding any attempt at a graceful solution because that would require admitting we have a problem, and an addict just doesn't do that until he hits bottom.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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
I've chosen Brazil...
I'm not sure that's an improvement.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
As a New Zealand citizen, I laugh at your optimism. Welcome to the land of low wages, rampant alcoholism and child poverty.
mediocrity rules, man
I think one of the reasons the UK is doing ok is that they kept their own currency. Greece wouldn't be in such bad trouble if they still had their own currency.
Calling it a totalitarian state is an overstatement - for now, at least - but yeah, that seems mostly right. We (the Portuguese) are fucked too, yet sheepishly accept any and every imposition, despite being perfectly obvious that it just buries us faster.
Dilbert RSS feed
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.
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.
Care to back up that claim with anything? The 'only reason' the UK is fine is because it took a lot of money from the EU? We didn't take a lot of money from the EU, we are massively net contributors every year.
The UK has never defaulted on its debts and considering we invented the concept of a 'National Debt' that is saying something. There is no way we would give up that record easily as it saves us a couple of points on our interest payments in perpetuity.
I think we may have renegotiated a couple of bilateral agreements with countries during the World Wars but we've never defaulted.
The Eu is a trap that is steadily making Europe less democratic. It's just effectively removed the elected Greek and Italian governments using the excuse that they cannot be trusted to do the right things.
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.
Speaking as someone who lives in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but who no longer lives in England, I've spent 4.5 of the last 6 years (since I got married, 6 years ago) trying to persuade the wife that if we're looking to move from our current flat, then we should look seriously at moving to somewhere in the EU, not on the borders as Britain is at the moment.
(And no, I would not for one second consider moving back to Engerlandddd!)
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"