And before you answer that ads without tracking don't pay the bills, that's honestly Facebook's problem.
There's a big difference between massive companies seeking to keep their brand in your mind and small businesses trying to let you know they even exist.
But how do you ban one without banning both? Its a complicated issue
If consumers knew the perfect good or service that they wanted to buy and exactly whom to buy it from, there wouldn't be a need for advertising. As it is now, information asymmetry creates a demand for advertising, so until people know everything about every market, you're going to have ads.
-paraphrasing someone 300 years ago, probably.
Sometimes people pick things that are bad; that people choose something doesn’t make it somehow good.
Maybe that lack of long-term feature is endemic to the capitalist system/environment, because decade-long growth usually isn't allowed to sacrifice short-term growth. I couldn't imagine a private company like Valve Software making the same decisions.
FB is free because they can pay for it with personalized ads. I doubt generic ads would fund the site as it stands today.
FB does not have some sort of right-to-exist. Beyond that, if FB goes out of business completely, the world is arguably improved.
I haven't used FB in years, but even I know that if FB didn't exist that another service would fill the gap in the market. The problem is FB plays fast and loose with privacy and security, which should be the focus of criticism for FB, since that negatively affects users. If FB didn't exist, you still run the risk of another player making the exact same mistakes.
Yes, but I do still see people give the "just don't use FaceBook then" argument on every post about this on HN, as if we should just ignore all the problems. Under this insane framework any horrible behavior by a company towards their customers is justified as long as you use their products willingly.
This also ignores the massive existing adoption FaceBook has. If I want to switch to twitter or mastodon or $otherSocialNetwork I have to convince everyone I communicate with on FaceBook to switch too.
User demand is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a business to exist.
Existing legality is not necessarily a good cause to dictate if a business should exist or not, as for some markets the law tends to lag society (i.e. federal law and weed dispensaries). This discussion isn't really about legality anyways, it's about market demand.
Maybe that’s ok.
It's not hard to understand. Everybody knows this is the case. But that excuses nothing.
Also, it's only the case because that's the business model Facebook chose. They could choose a different one.
> You get free access and get to see ads in exchange.
I love how you say that as if it's the ads that are the major issue (it's not, it's the tracking), and as if seeing ads is some sort of benefit.
> If the problem people have is ads
Again, the problem isn't the ads, it's the spying.
If ads that work without spying on users don’t pay enough to pay their data center bills then they should shut them down. I’m more than happy to vote for politicians that ensure this. I’m not comfortable saying “I’ll just not use services from companies X and Y because they use shady ads”.
Uh, no, they haven't. YOU are responsible for visiting websites and using their services under terms and conditions you agreed to. YOU are responsible for and capable of not using sites do not agree with. You are getting a service in exchange for being tracked and shown ads. If you don't like it, delete your account, or fix your damn /etc/hosts file to block the (admittedly overwhelming) number of domains FB uses for these purposes.
I'm no fan of Fb. I deleted my account, blocked thousands of domains in my /etc/hosts file, use multiple ad-blockers, etc. etc. Fuckerberg going to prison would make me giddy. But, you don't get to have your mystical cake and eat it, too. You don't dictate how they run, or what data they collect, or how they use it. Get real, dude. Take responsibility for your actions. You agreed to what they do when you read(skipped) the terms of service/privacy policy when you signed up.
However, 90+% of the time, they're not.
That they use fine print or dense legalese doesn't invalidate the fact that it was there for the end-user to read and agree or disagree with. I find that most "ordinary non-lawyer" people can understand these policies if they take the time to actually read them. They're verbose, not arcane.
I find exactly the opposite.
> They're verbose, not arcane.
They're both.
The problem is that people aren't lawyers and don't read them with a lawyer's eye. This frequently leads people to think that the terms are saying things that they aren't saying (by design). People tend to think that these policies are more favorable to the user than they actually are.
Isn’t that what I did when my elected representatives pushed GDPR through though?
The reason there are so few successful services with sensible advertising is simple: it’s too easy to fool people to accepting terrible ads that pay more.
I don’t think users should be expected to know how to edit their hosts file to preserve their integrity. Nor do I think they can be expected to read the ToS (get real).
I want regulation to ensure that idiots cannot agree to ToS that endanger their information or integrity. The GDPR and similar laws, if properly enforced, goes a long way towards that. I especially like the idea that access to the service can’t be conditioned on data collection.
Ok, that's fair.
> Nor do I think they can be expected to read the ToS (get real).
I am being real. ToS and Privacy Policies can be, and often are, legally binding. Do I expect people to read them? No. Are they legally subject to whatever they agreed to, regardless of whether or not they actually read it? Yes. The user agreed to the contact. They clicked the damn button. They can deal with the consequences of their haste and/or stupidity.
> I want regulation to ensure that idiots cannot agree to ToS that endanger their information or integrity.
That's a bit different than what your originally wrote, which seemed to be less like a desire for regulation to address this and more like a a desire for a new ToS between FB and you, a singular end-user.
FWIW, I'm also a proponent of the GDPR and CCPA. But I also don't think people can just scot-free break or circumvent contacts they agreed to. Where is the personal accountability for the user? It can't just _not_ exist.
I think most people understand that ads pay for Facebook. But so what? I don't see how it changes anything.
GDPR should be used for exactly this purpose - it is a protection against companies collecting and using personal data in this way. Facebook has the choice to show ads, just not personalised ones. What is specifically being argued about is that Facebook tried to claim ads were a contractual service (thus exempting them from rules on personal data) - but transparently they aren't.
And if Facebook can't survive in a future where it is forced to respect personal privacy, then may its death be ever sooner.
User choice has no bearing on the issue. The activity is either legal or not, and it should not be legal.
And yet Facebook is not alone doing this. While almost all the medium and small sized sites ask for consent nowadays the big players just seem to be immune. My go to example is spiegel.de which is one of Germany's largest newspapers. Full of trackers, full of personalized ads and I have never seen them asking for my consent.
While advertising is not illegal under the GDPR, collecting an individual's data for marketing or advertising purposes without a "basis" (as defined in the GDPR) is.
The plaintiff is arguing about data privacy, whereas Facebook's lawyer is playing the advertising card as a counter. The plaintiff is unhappy about the way Facebook uses personal data, while Facebook is arguing they have a legal basis for processing data for personalised advertising purposes in order to fulfil a contract which it entered into the users. (which is a basis in the GDPR).
User: "hey Facebook where's the personalised ads you promised me?" Facebook: "that clause was found to be illegal, and we have notified you that it is unenforceable by either party."
To phrase my question in another way, would that contract still need to be fulfilled, if they are blocked by GDPR from collecting the data they would need to fulfill it?
It’s a key part of the offering! You get free access and get to see ads in exchange. Others have tried other business models and failed...that’s how the world works, the better offering wins!
If the problem people have is ads then just make all ads illegal and we can move on. But trying to use GDPR as a lever is silly...it’s not what its intended to do, as much as some people would like it to