It's quite telling in such a situation when a company like Facebook hypothetically won't deliver a certain feature if they have to make their intentions clear. The immediate assumption is that they don't believe their justifications for it are sound and nobody would opt in, so they depend on keeping those motives private. Quite ironic, expecting your users to trust you but not trusting them at all, but I suppose that's business more than anything (sadly).

"GDPR doesn't penalize or prevent innovation. It just forces it out into the open."

This is a nice summary.

The GDPR still limits developer speed/freedom, and supposedly Facebook can build new stuff much faster without having to deal with the GDPR at all.

In the same sense as medical trial guidelines diminish scientist freedom and safety regulations regulate the freedom of engineers. Sorry, but just as I demand that if I walk into a hospital I'm being treated safely, consumers can demand the same thing from me as a developer.

Compared to the freedoms of millions and billions of uses my 'developer freedom' is pretty far down the list of things that matter. As developers we are servicing people, they are not our lab rats.

Social networking software is not in any way equivalent to medicine so thank you for making this false equivalence because it proves the point that these regulations are ridiculous.

If you don't want facebook to track you don't make an account on their website and don't click any of the stupid buttons on their website.

Having seen the influence social media can have on our discourse and even our political systems, including manipulation of democratic elections I think that comparison is absolutely warranted. It is the infrastructure of our modern communication, not just a 'website with stupid buttons'.

> If you don't want facebook to track you don't make an account on their website and don't click any of the stupid buttons on their website.

They still build a shadow profile of you from mentions and photos that friends upload.

Facebook tracks us through our friends' SMS history, contacts, and invites.

It also tracks us through its widgets on other sites.

It requires a lot of effort to fully opt out.

Without regulation like GDPR, Facebook aren't obliged to state what those stupid buttons actually do with regards to the information they store about you.

Being open and honest with people really doesn't slow down development all that much.

> GDPR still limits developer speed/freedom

Good!

This is like saying that prescription-drug regulations are limiting speed/freedom. When those things are dangerous to the user, they should be limited!

And I still don't agree that it slows anyone down. Want to launch a new feature quickly? No problem, go ahead and launch it. All you have to do is add an opt-in dialog at the beginning.

As far as freedom goes, we've seen the abuses of that freedom and it's time to limit it.