Also known as "Hobson's Choice": a free choice in which only one thing is offered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobson%27s_choice
Naturally the vast majority will just click through and accept the defaults.
But what if a small number does not? Could Facebook see 6% or 4% or 2% attrition because of this?
2% attrition of 2.2 billion users is like the entire population of California and Oregon.
This many people leaving the network makes it a little less connected and a little less valuable for the 98% who remain.
That's a lot of people wandering about, discovering new alternatives to connect with their friends and family.
Facebook will be with us for a long time, but reducing their influence would be a big net positive.
Even outside of me and my friends, I mostly just hear of people using it to connect directly with people, like joining some Facebook groups for specific discussions.
You exist.
They don't need you to participate. They need your email or your phone number that can link you to the rest of the matrix. With a mobile app, they get your phone number automatically.
Everything else you post is icing on the cake. They don't need your relationship status. They don't need your address. Maybe your phone number will link to one, but they don't need it to be accurate.
Now you're part of the data pool. You're one more audience member. You're fueling facebook and their profits.
You're being sold.
Not only that, non-participation grants a false sense of security. As does the data they ask for; as if the data you post is all that they know or that is being shared. As do all their privacy settings. As does deleting your account. Facebook might mark you as deleted, but your data has already been used, sold, and transferred to 3rd parties, none of whom are inclined to delete your data.
If the data hasn't changed, and you haven't changed, then deleting yourself from facebook doesn't change anything.
I still have an account for instance, but I log in only once/mo. and keep it solely for the API keys.
My friends seem to be a little less active then 10 years ago, as well.
In the height of Facebooks data scandal, daily deletions — people who deleted their accounts and quit Facebook — was at about 4000-5000 users a day.
It has now returned to normal levels, of about 1000 a day.
Facebook has 1.86 billion users. Look upon these numbers, and despair.
Also, FB revenue and users are increasing - which indicates they are not seeing any downturn like what you are talking about here.
I would assume a large percentage of this number are bots / automated content.
"(42) Where processing is based on the data subject's consent, the controller should be able to demonstrate that the data subject has given consent to the processing operation. [...] For consent to be informed, the data subject should be aware at least of the identity of the controller and the purposes of the processing for which the personal data are intended. Consent should not be regarded as freely given if the data subject has no genuine or free choice or is unable to refuse or withdraw consent without detriment."
Are people free to leave Facebook?
Me, I need an account with Google for my job. Will they now only be allowed to demand I consent to the parts of the data processing necessary to provide the services I use? Or in other words, since I don't rely on their advertising, does GDPR mandate that opt-in to tracking for ads must be optional?
GDPR, Article 4: ‘consent’ of the data subject means any freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of the data subject’s wishes by which he or she, by a statement or by a clear affirmative action, signifies agreement to the processing of personal data relating to him or her;
> We use cookies to enhance your visit to our site and to bring you advertisements that might interest you. Read our Privacy and Cookie Policies to find out more.
Bottom line, even if you give them consent in such forced manner, they will pay the fine if they use the data. Not only that, I bet that in this moment there is a lawyer preparing class action against FB for forcing the consent (And they will win! After 25th of May, FB is breaking the EU law). Max Schrems gave FB hard time before and I bet he is just waiting for new chance, this is his site https://noyb.eu/ , check it and check how many donations he got. I am stockpiling myself with popcorns as this is going to be fun to watch. I really thought that FB is going to be smarter, probably Zuck got another of his tantrums and did another really stupid business mistake, that will cost him a lot.
But, as FB user, please consider something else: Facebook is trying to downplay your rights, which directly proves that don't care about you. Do you really want to continue using such service? Do you really value yourself so low that you are prepared to bend over?
https://www.politico.eu/article/facebook-ecj-european-court-...
"Europeans will in future be able to bring US-style class actions for (alleged) privacy violations, instead of having to sue individually and expensively. It’s thanks to a little-known clause of the EU’s GDPR, which comes into force in May."
And maybe for non-EU users, don't complain about GDPR, back it up, you will give your legislators a powerfull signal and you might also get the protection of your fundamential human right.
IANAL. The only argument I'm aware of that data controllers can make for processing data without consent is if there is a legitimate interest: if the data controller needs to process the data in fulfillment of a contract/service. I wonder how this will play out for non-users. It would seem there's no legitimate interest there.
Something like that, I expect, although I'm not a lawyer either.
FB, as with all third party trackers, isn't the one actually responsible for notifying you about the use of their pixels etc. on third party sites. The site operator using it is. See https://developers.facebook.com/docs/privacy
if there's a hosted image from a facebook domain (e.g. a like button), unless that image is loaded after consent is given, facebook can already associate that users' IP address with having visited that web site by nature of sending the image over. in other words, facebook is tracking pre-consent (unless those images are loaded post-hoc, which is just not happening in today's world)
as a result, it's fundamentally impossible to consent before visiting a particular website, because there's no way to know what other domains will be triggered by visiting that website.
the only way i've found to defeat this behavior is by using ublock's origin's default deny policy which prevents all 3rd party domains from being accessed by default. it's a bit of a usability pain as one often has to add e.g. stack overflow's CDN to use its website "well", but does prevent visiting a website which has an embedded image hosted on a FB domain from being loaded, which defeats the more nefarious FB tracking.
https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/Dynamic-filtering:-de...
If you're running a website with one of these, I strongly suggest you make sure you record whether people accept and actually boot them off the site of they don't. GDPR article 7 section one requires a website to be able to demonstrate that I have given consent, and recital 32 requires that that consent be specific and unambiguous. It's doubtful that "by continuing to use this site you agree..." statements will be satisfactory, especially if you start the tracking the instant they hit the page, before they can click that ok button.
uBlock Origin is great for blocking Ads though. If you really need to block scripts, there's NoScript.
I recommend using at least the adblocker and the tracker blocker, even if only to reduce memory usage of the browser and take back a couple of CPU cycles from your computer stolen by pesky ads.
I noticed their 'opt out for interest based ads' was through a cookie set by some consortium of creeps companies. at the time I remember thinking its like 'if I dont want you to track and follow me all over the internet then I need to allow you to track me and follow me all over the place so you know who I am.. Riiight'. plus that setting resets if you delete the cookie. so I dont know how will that work with the container. perhaps somebody who knows more can enlighten me.
honestly given that FB is after my healthcare data, my patience has worn quite thin with them. IMHO the creep factor and unintended consequences are way to many.
What? Can you provide a link to that? I hadn't heard this before, and find that really disturbing. I'd like to learn more.
Users that don’t accept the terms or use various tech to block this, would receive misappropriated ads. Bad ads make companies lose revenue while annoying the users with extremely irrelevant info.
This method should be extremely effective in removing false positives.
Personal observation: ads are never going to go away and I personally prefer receiving ads about some local beer brand and not about lipstick or sake in Japan.
Or non-Facebook related, why can't my smart TV just let me choose PC Gaming, Technology, and Concert advertisements as highest priority. I might actually look forward to watching an Oculus or Vive advertisement, instead of putting the TV on mute, or leaving the room when I see another health insurance commercial for someone 60+.
As an example of stupid targeted ads: I bought a Casper mattress a couple of months ago and pretty much every single ad I've seen since then (on devices where I don't have them blocked) has been for mattresses. How many mattresses does the internet think I need?
If I'm reading about something on the internet it's generally because I'm interested in it. Why not try to sell me something related to that rather than something I already bought!?
If they would just ask me what my interests are and stop allowing shady/malicious ads, I'd probably just turn off adblock.
If you pick "videogame", unless they ask you if you like RPGs, which videogame do they advertise to you?
(not saying it's WORTH it, but ad tech is pretty darn sophisticated these days)
The online ad business is just complete and utter bullshit. They have all this data and have utterly failed at using even the most basic data points ("where does he live?" "what language does he speak?"). And all they can think of is "hmm probably need more data"
If the webpage is written in french (or visible as such) that reviews computer hardware, pick hardware ads first and if available in french. That is IMO a reasonable assumption to make and I don't believe that a lot of users will be mistargeted that hard.
Bigger publishers like newspapers could run ads depending on section, ie the politics section shows political ads and the weather section shows a raincoat ad.
The only downside I see is that localized ads don't work as well (ie, "local restaurant has cheap burgers" and "99+ women in <your area> want to talk to you on tinder!!!!"). Such places could put their ads on relevant pages though, ie the internet page of a local newspaper or the local communities' internet presence.
I run ABP and there are still ads all over the place in Facebook. I've taken to reporting every ad I see in my Timeline as spam.
Anyway perhaps these no-decline 'permission' screens will cause a few people to reconsider their presence on Facebook. After all the company's Chief Privacy Officer endorses it! “People can choose to not be on Facebook if they want"
Yes, but not more than a few. Privacy is not a big concern for most.
“People can choose to not be on Facebook if they want"
I made my choice a number of years ago.
https://www.accc.gov.au/consumers/contracts-agreements/unfai...
I tabled the idea of the group leaving fb for somewhere else, as now would be the time people would be receptive to that idea.
The consensus was, nah, dont bother, this is fine... welp.
edit: I suppose it comes from how optimistically/pessimistically you view someone saying that a decision is on the table, I guess. Funny.
I never accepted the change in the expectation that everything will now be ad supported. That's a fundamental, massive shift. You can still say no that imposition, it's not actually baked into any of the technology, just a bunch of bloat glued on afterwards.
Yes there are ads. Yes I dislike those ads but they pay for the tv programming and broadcast.
No, broadcast tv does not keep a massive dossier on me or even know I exist.
Almost nobody expected nor understood that they are now "free from having privacy." It's not usual nor expected nor was it ever made clear. It was also done where there was no consent (shadow profiles for people without facebook accounts) and where consent was expressly withdrawn ("I now know what facebook does and would like you to close my account and delete all data and all backups of data relating to me"). Wildly evil stuff going on there, argue about what the law "says" all you like it's foul and should be illegal. It probably is illegal too if you haven't got billions to buy out of the problem. Que the apologists...
There are plenty of other media consumption businesses paid by advertising where you aren't being monitored in a manner the stasi could only dream of. Free printed newspapers supported by advertising have been around my entire life. This was the expectation.
Could facebook and google have grown if they had stated on their front page, every login that they were keeping records of everywhere you went on the internet? They wouldn't have got any traction whatsoever so they lied. Android will keep track of everywhere you go physically and add that to our file on you. Apple are better is just such BS you have to be a huge fanboy to swallow it.
Everyone concerned should be facing criminal charges for that kind of lying. Trying to claim they didn't know they were lying at the time and it was a bait and switch fraud instead.
That's a good question, but once GDPR is in effect, the law is going to require that all consent is genuine, informed, active consent. A consequence of that is that someone must be able to withhold their consent without suffering for it, unless the thing they're consenting to is essential to whatever else they're doing.
If you're thinking this fundamentally undermines the current business model of sites like Facebook, you're probably right, and given the political rhetoric around the GDPR, it's possible that this was the intention of the EU from the start.
I do wonder how this will affect Instagram, which is where most of my peers and friends are.
