FB has pictures of people who are not users of FB, as well as shadow profiles of such users.

Seems very similar to me.

Not really equivalent, as in a public space you have an expectation of being filmed (at least in the US.) Facebook isn't claiming anyone in those photos has agreed to anything, the law generally permits it unless the copyright ownership stands in the way. Your presence in any of those photos does not create an explicit grant to rights outside of the implicit grant created by the copyright holder that posts the photo.

The photos are not necessarily from public spaces.

I think the degree to which there’s an expectation of privacy is a bit of a distraction from the core issue: Facebook is not claiming that you have any sort of legal agreement with them simply by appearing in your friend’s photo. They’re still going to use it to construct shadow profiles, of course, but if it somehow came up in court they’d say it was your friend’s responsibility to secure rights. It’s not great but what these manufacturers are doing seems to be even worse than Facebook, which is somewhat impressive.

If I'm not mistaken, this has never been definitely proven in court. We know they do it, but courts have never discussed that. Doesn't make it legal.

To be clear, I’m not claiming it’s legal (or agreeing with the guy who says it’s no big deal). Just pointing out it is fairly equivalent. More than I expected before I started thinking about the comparison.

To be equivalent FB would need to be taking the photos themselves and then selling the data. I really can’t think of a good online equivalent. Google street view would be close except they blur peoples faces.

Shadow profiles are

- collected by FB

- without even the pretense of consent

- sold to the highest bidder

I’m a little more concerned about someone bugging my house than someone saving stuff sent to them.

didnt they only start blurring on maps after european courts told them so?

I can see some level of equivalency:

An unsuspecting person (Alice) ends up with a shadow FB profile because someone (Bob) who actually created an account (therefore having an opportunity to read terms of service) decided to take a photo of Alice and send it to Facebook.

An unsuspecting person (Alice) ends up with Subaru having an audio recording of what they said because someone (Bob) who actually bought the car (therefore having an opportunity to read terms of service) decided to invite Alice into the car.

In both cases, the company receiving Alice's information would likely say that Alice should take issue with Bob's behavior, not the company's behavior, if they don't like the situation.

Picture are one thing. Using those pictures (shadow profiles etc) is very different.

Whether it’s legal or not is menaingless given the power imbalance.

Would that make it the owner who is liable for any illegality, then, if they didn't inform their passenger(s) about the recording to which they, the owner, agreed?