The new DPD is strict compared to previous regulation, but there are two parts of the directive that a particularly interesting:
- The Data Portability concept: A company covered by the DPD is required to deliver to the user all data the company has on the user, in a standardised format. That means Facebook now has to hand out all your data (information, pics, likes, posts,...) for you to use freely - also in other services. I think this in effect means you own your data. I'm excited to see the effect of this one.
- The right to be forgotten: A company is required to delete all data they have on a user, if the user requests. Actually, if the user invokes this right, the company is not allowed make public, <b>store or process</b> any data related to the user.
From what I hear in discussions between american colleagues, american companies have no clue whats about to hit them. I know there is a mild panic here in Denmark, and the DPD is the most talked about subject in IT at the moment - and we've always been rather anal with the privacy stuff (e.g. cookie-law).
Edit: Oh, I forgot the fun part; this gets a lot of attention due to the sizes of the fines companies get for not adhering to the directive. Fines are up to EUR 20.000.000 or 4% of the company's global annual revenue, whichever is higher. Facebook made USD27.638.000.000 in 2016, so thats a fine of USD1.105.520.000 for not playing nice.
(I posted this in reply to another post, but seems relevant here too)
The problem here is that those companies use fingerprinting to collect data. This means that in theory they are not 100% sure who is the person they are collecting data from, but in practice they could be 99.99% sure. Still, this makes it impossible to hand out all this data, because there is still a 0.01% chance that the data does not belong to the person who requested it.
Time for some math:
Since it is only a 0.01% chance, it means you need 10000 discrete pieces of information collected on a single individual before there is a chance of error. If a company indeed has that many pieces of information on you, you first of all need to know that for a fact.
There is a chance the company will counter that this is aggregated probability, as in, with an uneven distribution of errors. If it is indeed aggregated probability, the companies which advertise on these platforms need to demand their money back because for all you known, none of the folks they are targeting are actually correct fits for their ads. Fingerprinting puts the burden of proof on the shoulders of the company that they are indeed allowing advertisers to target the audience they want. How can they be so sure if the errors are unevenly distributed?
In any case, everyone should demand the information anyway, and let us start using this fingerprinting theory as an excellent opportunity to get deeper into the practices of these companies.
Moral: of, relating to, or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong
I think it is "clearly wrong" that Facebook creates shadow profiles, because it is violating the freedom of people who have not signed up for their service, in the same way that it is clearly wrong for me to take away your favorite pet for ritualistic sacrifice against your wishes, even if "everyone" in the community agrees that it has been a consistently effective method for pleasing the Gods.
Of course, you know these analogies are tenuous, and you will eventually go into very precise definitions of words (or worse, you will actually start taking my pet sacrifice analogy and dissecting it). Perhaps you could tell us about something you think is clearly unethical, and we will try and draw the connection for you.
That just shifts the question to how does it violate their freedom? That is not at all obvious to me. (NOTE: this does not mean that I'm saying it is OK...just that I don't see how it is a freedom violation).
My computer desk at home is near a large window, which I often look out while I am using the computer. From this window I can see people from my street walking dogs. I can see kids going to and from school. I see cars coming and going. My street is a dead end street about 1 km long, and I'm about 200 meters in. The street bends a little way past my place, so the last 700 meters or so are not visible from my place.
By casually observing people walk by, I've gathered data to make several inferences about people who live beyond the bend. I've figured out when some people are having house guests (by seeing people I've never seen before walking dogs that I recognize).
I've inferred sibling relationships among some of the children who walk by (by noticing dress and equipment patterns that clearly indicate that the same person is shopping for both).
I've figured out what kind of cars the parents of the some of the children drive (by seeing those cars stop when passing the children on the way home, and the children getting in, or seeing a strong correlation between days when particular children who walked by to school in the morning do not walk by in the afternoon and days when particular cars drive by in the afternoon).
Am I violating these people's freedom by making these inferences from what I see out my window?
If not, what is the fundamental difference between what I'm doing by observing people that walk or drive by on my street and what Facebook does by observing what its users do on its site?
Imagine, you share your observations with, say, a PI who was hired by a paranoid spouse or by someone's employer.
Facebook is like a vast and far reaching network of nosy neighbours of whom you do not know who they are chatty with. Maybe someone who likes to jump to conclusions?
I would think, that advertising in the local press or, having a sign outside the window to the effect that you were able to sell personal and assumed to be private information about the people who lived in the street would provoke an unpleasant reaction.
Doing something purely for your own benefit that you know will cause significant distress to others is sociopathy I think. Perhaps 'unethical' is the wrong word. 'antisocial' definitely covers it though it might not be strong enough.
Would you say there is absolutely nothing wrong with this?
The expectation of privacy. The window analogy may seem very clear to you, but a lot of people see Facebook as a sort of postal service carrying their enveloped messages to their friends, and they have to trawl through a pretty large document of legalese to find out how it isn't. Facebook is more like one-way mirrored glass.
You may not violate a freedom but the bigger question to me is why would you even contemplate the thoughts to infer, etc.
What is "wrong" is that people think it is ok to talk about others.
Next time you get together in a group take a poll on how many conversations are just talking about people.
It's upsetting because I don't know what I can do about it. How do I protect my privacy in this world? Do I stop having friends? Do I wear a mask everywhere?
The difference is, the GDR is gone and none of this has any consequences anymore. However, the consequences of Facebook et al. are yet to be seen.
Even the best ethics expert in the world would just be one who knows how to describe a bunch of ethical systems and ideas that exist currently and historically. Other than that, they can help you exactly zilch with such decisions. I'm not a psychologist, but I'll claim if it makes you feel upset and disgusted, that means you did decide you consider it wrong. And if it helps, I agree.
As for how to change things, well, ask the EFF for example? There's things you can do which, apart from being a real help, also help you with the dread of this free floating vague blob of worries that you sometimes look at but as you said feel you can't do anything about.
One thing you can always do, is that not giving in. It just takes one person to prove the claim that everybody accepts or wants X wrong. When being that person seems scary, personally, when looking around, I'm not convinced at all that the people who fight no or trivial battles are less scared. It's not actually safer on the side of thugs, generally speaking, and life isn't more fun at mindless parties either, only those who don't have the comparison would think that. I'd rather say that's all built on sand, on holes that have to be temporarily filled with more and more material.
So keep on hanging on, because there might come a point where you feel less upset, more grounded, and the people who drift along will become more and more confused. Real things can hurt, sometimes badly, but real things also have longevity, they bring their own means and nutrients for growth.
At least, that's how I answer these questions for myself, that's how it ended up working out, and while I know that can't be generalized, sometimes it does get darkest before dawn. Don't let it drag you down (Sophie Scholl's outlook = best outlook).. but what you can shoulder, do shoulder. The only way out really is through, ultimately.
If worst comes to worst, don't get crushed when the screeching narcissism machine attempting to eat the planet drives itself and billions of people against the wall and implodes. Easier said than done, but change will come one way or the other. I'm not convinced it would leave spots of unscorched Earth, but that hope dies last, anyway.
That said, I do believe that there's a practical problem, but it's us that must try to solve it, we must educate people, we must ask our friends not to post our photos or personal info on social media, etc.
What if they decide to publish online your computed profile? Maybe they know you better than yourself.
> as long as the don't use coercion
Isn't influence or suggestion a kind of coercion? Why do you think they spend so much resources on profiling everyone?
> That said, I do believe that there's a practical problem, but it's us that must try to solve it, we must educate people
My country used to have over 6000 people killed on roads out of about 60M people. The state tried to "educate" people about not driving while drunk, not driving fast, using seat belts, etc. But in the end, what actually worked was more policemen on the roads.
You say freedom is the lack of coercion but you fail to realize that you are coerced into being part of FB, and your only opt-out is drastic measures like using a blocker.
FB probably has more intelligence capabilities about mere people than any past or present intelligence agency of any country ever had. That raises a lot of questions, the first of them being to make sure that they don't use it against people.
Yes, there is influence, and I would certainly prefer it to no be like that, but freedom of people to use a lousy service as fb is still freedom, and freedom is more important than my feelings.
In your argument you state that it violates peoples' freedom, but you need to define how their freedom is being violated.
That's your interpretation of their reasoning, Facebook's interpretation could assume that they haven't signed up for service yet.
Also, how exactly is their freedom violated? Let's say they could do a certain set of actions on a given day prior to Facebook violation. So if a government violated their freedom (e.g. by putting them under house arrest), a certain subset of those actions, like walking to a store or a park, would be impeded.
What would be an example of actions that would be impeded by Facebook's violation?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08qgbc3
That said, I'm personally certain the laws will evolve rapidly in a favorable manner. Privacy issues resulting from Facebook/Google and co are becoming increasingly unacceptable for the society.
[1] The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics
https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...
[2] The Dictator's Handbook: A Practical Manual for the Aspiring Tyrant
https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Practical-Manual-A...
The massive income Facebook has seems to imply so.
It is not a prove per se these ads really are worth their costs.
If "these ads are working" is defined as "these ads are accomplishing what they were intended to when purchased," peoples' spend is founded more in data than belief.
Buyers have access to ~2BN people and tools to target them by age, interest, and geography -- much of that demographic and psychographic data is explicitly and freely given by those people themselves; tons more are derived and inferred. Buyers repeat their buys because these ads accomplish what they intended at purchase -- they can effectively drive traffic or commerce or whatever else.
This real power to generate revenue makes the issues around privacy, security, transparency, awareness, responsibility, ethics, laws, oversight more important than if it was created by ignorant beliefs. The latter would be temporary; the former generally strengthens as more data gets into the system.
The fact that people buy ads is not at all evidence that they are effective.
So you think that Facebook has collectively convinced thousands of businesses who are repeat customers to use something that is losing them money?
They were steadily losing users in the very significant 13-17 years demographic, had a CTR one fifth of the rest of the web. Several reports of brands quitting facebook or advertising on facebook because it is expensive and does not seem to be effective on a background of unstable rules and "quirky" system with some overcharging and ads not displayed.
Facebook built itself on investor story time, with promises of better targeted ads in the future, and up to now is still selling the idea that at some point in the future it will succeed at this. It has yet to deliver on this promise in a consistent way.
Smart is not wise. Just complicate what you think people would hesitate to do, and they will get fooled into dong it. Especially if it challenges their intelligence (e.g. algorithms).