I have an issue with Facebook doing this to OTHER PEOPLE and thus dramatically influencing the world I live in. I can and do block their Javascript, but that doesn't block it for others.
The idea that our decisions are just independent and everyone can decide for themselves is (A) wrong in terms of how we are affected by decisions made by others (B) anti-social and (C) denies the reality of organized power.
If Facebook had to just be a bunch of unorganized, separate, independent people instead of a company with organized structure, they'd not have the power they have. They have power because of their organized structure. The idea that the other side of thing (the regular citizens) should only act as isolated individuals while the companies act as enormous organized power is ridiculous.
If there are more powerful superiors, then wouldn't the same argument apply? They must be powerful because they have superiors, etc. etc. ad absurdem…
My point wasn't that any ONE person (Zuck or anyone) is all powerful or influential. The point is that SOLIDARITY i.e. ORGANIZATION itself confers power on the organization.
Organized power might be distributed where no one person can dictate the organization's direction. Or it might have an all-powerful-dictator. Either way, organizing confers power to the organized entity.
Corporations are powerful, even though they are constrained in various ways and the power is wielded by a mix of actors within the corporation.
Consumers / citizens who each act unilaterally have less power even though their aggregate decisions can have powerful effects in the market (because they are disorganized, they can only choose from what the supply side offers, we don't get true demand-driven products).
Organized power doesn't necessarily mean top-down either. See the Starfish and the Spider (book about decentralization). Decentralized entities are more persistent (no single head to cut off to kill them), but decentralized ≠ unorganized.
Regardless, it is a moot point because third party tracking is here to stay, even under GDPR - you'll just have another message box to dismiss when browsing. My favorite so far is this one - http://prntscr.com/j67usw . I offered a few ways to slow down that tracking above, but the only true way to not be tracked is to not use the Internet, because none of this even broaches the subject of what data ISPs collect about your behavior.
This is a problematic attitude. It's the car dealer telling the lemon [1] buyer to "take personal responsibility" for being sold junk.
The point of government is we don't stand alone. Facebook is a menace, and I block them. But I shouldn't have to. And neither should my mother.
> it’s hypocritical to only have a problem with Facebook when Google is doing it on a scale that Facebook can only imagine
Whatabout whatabout [2]? "You can't arrest me because there is another arsonist in town" isn't a valid excuse.
(In any case, third parties calling out some, but not all, bad actors in a category isn't hypocrisy. It's prioritization. Hypocrisy would be Google calling out Facebook's advertising model, or an Enron executive criticising Facebook employees' complicity.)
That's a flawed analogy. Paying for a car and being defrauded is in no way related to being tracked by websites. A better analogy is walking around naked and then being upset when people look at your bare ass. If you don't want people to see you naked, wear clothes. If you don't want people to track you on the internet, don't expose yourself.
>The point of government is we don't stand alone. Facebook is a menace, and I block them. But I shouldn't have to. And neither should my mother.
That's not the point of the government. Many of us don't want the government to be an all-encompassing nanny state deciding what's okay for private parties to do with public information. Its incredibly disturbing how many people not only tolerate, but openly welcome government regulation of private, interpersonal behavior. You say they should block Facebook. They have already blocked Backpage. What else do you want to give them the power to block? Where do you draw the line? Personally I think Facebook is extremely scummy. I'm not on Facebook, and I block them in every way - but I certainly don't want the government blocking them - or anyone else - on my behalf.
This is incorrect: they're both examples of informational asymmetry being used to disadvantage a consumer. In both cases, that consumer needs to possess technical knowledge in order to understand the ways that the counterparty entity is exploiting them. In the case of the car dealership, at least the consumer is aware of the stakes when they step onto the lot, i.e. they are planning to buy a car. The problem with Facebook is exactly that people aren't aware of how they are being monetized, and that there is an explicit financial incentive to obscure that from them. They are stepping onto a car lot, or more accurately a surveillance operation, that has been made to look like an amusement park. "Personal responsibility" is a convenient fig leaf for people who want to pretend that the amusement park wasn't the sales pitch. If you don't like the original analogy to a used car salesman, consider the need for similar regulation around financial services, clean water, pharmaceuticals, etc. etc. etc.
I think there's an analogy here-if enough people are being successfully abused by private companies it's no longer a matter that you can just pawn off on some sort of concept of personal responsibility. If your beloved private companies are threatening to exploit people hard enough to threaten the very existence of democracy, then it certainly starts to look like something where exploring a government role is worthwhile.
Yours is a technical solution to a human problem. If we care about democracy and the future of the Internet, we will dismantle Facebook. (I expect we will, though in typical democratic fashion, after years of quibbling.)
That's the very crux of the whole "debate" over everything from Facebook to "Russiagate". The bottom line is, you can't fix stupid. We have a very serious problem with stupidity and ignorance in this country. Far too many people lack basic critical thinking skills. You can't childproof society because far too many people are easy to fool. This "problem" won't be fixed until we have a critical mass of people who can think for themselves, be skeptical and aware.
I tried and doing so breaks pretty much every website. Because it’s not only the tracking stuff that makes use of JavaScript and third-party cookies.
Tl;dr He was trying to sound helpful while telling you to go fuck yourself.
The reality is that you have a choice: use the Internet and have some tracking happen, or don't use it at all. Even the GDPR doesn't stop tracking - it just requires better disclosure of it and mandates certain handling procedures for the data that is collected on the backend.
If you just have a dislike for certain websites tracking you, you can use the Windows (or other) firewall to block specific domains as I stated above.
(I am not talking about criminals here, they wont care)
Effectively this means that if user doesnt want to be tracked you wont track it. And that you cant load facebook button on your page if you dont get consent (or you are liable for lawsuit, by user and, the more interesting part, by facebook as you are providing them with illegal data.
Please read this, you are taking GDPR much too shallow... it is not and quite a few companies will have problems as they were too lazy to read the GDPR but were rather relying on messed up opinions on the internet.
When you visit a website that uses our advertising products (like AdSense), social products (like the +1 button), or analytics tools (Google Analytics), your web browser automatically sends certain information to Google....we may use the information we receive to, for example:
Make ads more effective....
The Google Analytics property owner has to explicitly opt-in to allow Google to do this. And part of that opt in includes the site owner agreeing to an addition ToS certifying that they both disclose they do so and have appropriate consent to do so. You can learn more about that at [1].
In practice, most site owners toggle this feature on without realizing the liability they've agreed to. Because it enables additional reports in GA (by merging and exposing the demographic targeting data their ad system has), as well as pushes GA data into Adwords and DoubleClick if you want to link your accounts. But, Google does keep the GA data siloed off by default.
[1] https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2444872?hl=en
12% of 1,000,000 is 120,000.
Not advocating for one side or the other, just correcting the math.
One person commented on 12% of top 1m sites. Another is commenting on 75% of top 100k sites.
EDIT: Checked the source material links and GA is on 65% of the top 1m. That is definitely more, and a more useful comparison I think.
If you have an issue with this, disable javascript and third party cookies on your browser - take some personal responsibility. Also, go setup a protest on Google’s front lawn, because Google Analytics (which also tracks you) is in use on nearly 75% of the Quantcast Top 100k sites [1]. That represents billions of people whose “browser history is being siphoned off with their consent” as you put it and over 6x the number of sites that the Facebook pixel is on.
Since you seem to have a significant issue with Facebook, I’d suggest that you block all connections to them, which should solve your problem. Most firewalls, including the free Windows Firewall, enable you to easily block all connections to any root domain. You can configure your firewall to block *.Facebook.com for example, and then you will no longer have to worry about Zuck monitoring you.
[1] https://trends.builtwith.com/analytics/Google-Analytics