Bullshit? Bingo!
"Our vision is of a mission to declare our intent to attempt to strive to try to do better at learning."
There, that probably sums up what will come out of it.
Facebook has once again irked EU politicos by failing to send sufficiently senior staffers to face another grilling on the data-harvesting saga. Today, it was the turn of the EU Parliament's civil liberties committee (LIBE) to issue a disappointed statement after it was denied access to the execs it had asked for. Since the …
Strictly speaking, they're unparsable; they're constructed by ex LISP programmers who ensure they're fully recursive with no final truth value to prevent an endless loop - like Zuckerberg himself, they're unEVALable to anyone wanting to know what they do.
(I'll get my coat)
"The fact that Facebook actually has a "privacy" officer is laughable."
Perhaps we misunderstand the underlying/undocumented function of the Facebook Privacy Officer.
Maybe his role is to protect, at all costs, the Privacy of Facebook and it's Executive staff from the probing of EU and UK Government departments. Given the current position he seems to have been very successful so is probably sleeping very soundly.
Those people are suppose to be the ones making decisions and setting policy. The EU could bite down on Facebook hard by insisting that servers are on EU territory and start chipping away at their business model by restricting how Facebook can use the data. It might take that for Facebook to take the EU seriously.
"start chipping away at their business model by restricting how Facebook can use the data. It might take that for Facebook to take the EU seriously."
At some point that's going to happen. Facebook will then find legislators treating it with the disdain it showed them. What goes around comes around. FB would be well advised to remember that.
This post has been deleted by its author
This post has been deleted by its author
This post has been deleted by its author
This post has been deleted by its author
"Facebook is worth nearly 1/2 trillion dollars."
What does "worth" mean? If you mean money in the bank you might have a point although the shareholders might want some of that "returned" to them.
If you mean stock market valuation then you have to account for the fickleness of the stock market. It's not real money, just a projection of the price at which recent transactions took place. A surplus of sellers over buyers will change that in an instant and feedback can amplify such changes. Sticking with your point of GDPR fines a 4% fine would cause at least a bit of a wobble. If there were a few cases ongoing and FB had to announce it was making a provision of an eighth of its turnover for possible fines the feedback loop might really start a plunge.
Actually, I was thinking not of GDPR which is done and dusted as far as legislation is concerned. But what of new legislation? A reconsideration of corporate taxation rules? What about the idea of having companies pay the data subjects for slurpage as discussed here https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/22/cowen_technopoly/ ? Or, more likely, governments being governments, valuing the slurpage as a taxable asset?
And don't just think in terms of fines; we are starting to see criminal sanctions against company officers, e.g. in the case of the VW emissions business. Zuck and his friends really wouldn't like legislation that puts them in line for those (actually GDPR already does).
"you cannot avoid Facebook easily."
Nonsense. I have never been a member of FB and have never used any of their services. I do not have to do anything out of the ordinary for that. Sites that use FB login usually also provide other options such as Google and MS, if they only provide FB then I wouldn't want to use their garbage site anyway.
If you meant its almost impossible to avoid them building a shadow profile on you from your idiot friends' contact lists and photos, beacons and like buttons on 3rd party website, etc then I agree but that is not what you said.
This post has been deleted by its author
This post has been deleted by its author
It is indeed a question of competence, but of a different kind. Not the competence in the area of privacy, but competence as in "being able to set policy and issue orders".
In any case, I do not see what their problem is. All they need to do is to find a "Prodotti di Berlusconi" ranking MEP in their ranks to do a quick deal with Facebook so that whoever shows up shows up only for 30 minutes, runs a script and disappears after that. If they have one, even the ZuckerBorg himself will show up as it will be totally prearranged, pre-set and completely safe. By the way "Prodotti Di Berlusconi" are not corrupt. Oh, no, there is nothing like corruption involved. Really. Really, really, really...
If FB refuses to answer all your questions to your satisfaction, then simply ban FB until it complies.
If you block your citizens from accessing FB at all (except via VPN) then you stop FB from being able to make any money off them. If you freeze all FB assets located in your area & hold it hostage pending a full audit of their books WRT to the paying of proper taxes, GDPR compliance, etc, then FB will lose *Billions* as a result. And THAT is how you make that uppity shitlick sit up & do your bidding, by hitting him right where it hurts: his share/stakeholders' wallets.
How fast would his own board hand him to you like a trussed up pig for the BBQ once their bank accounts started hemmoraging cash? How much could you fine FB under the GDPR? How much money could FB's 'holders stand to lose while their boss gives TheFinger to you? I'm betting it will be measured in nanoseconds after the first fine slaps them in the face.
Please oh please oh PLEASE ban FB! Please bankrupt their worthless asses for all eternity. Have every FB executive arrested, their assets frozen, then the bodies thrown into a long disused lavatory at the bottom of an unlit flight of stairs behind a sign that reads "Beware of the leopard!" & forced to listen to Vogon poetry for the rest of their lives...
forced to listen to Vogon poetry for the rest of their lives...
Ah the nostalgia. Thinking about it wouldn't Freddled Gruntbuggly and Foonting Turlingdromes (to mention but two) make superlative pseudonyms for posters on this esteemed site?
If anyone signs up with any of them now we'll all know who gave them the idea...
"If you block your citizens from accessing FB at all (except via VPN) then you stop FB from being able to make any money off them."
Inevitably FB will be fined by the EU for something, they will scream but eventually get the cleaning lady to pay up from the Petty Cash box they keep for other cleaning products.
As Shadow Systems says above far far better to block Facebook, sort of equivalent to the removal of liberty of a prison sentence, for a number of consecutive days. That will make all the users aware of the bad things they have done, allow the addicted ones some cold turkey and probably increase productivity in the EU overall.
People will scream "but you are hurting the innocent users" - good! that's the idea as it will only be the "innocent" users who can bring pressure on FB and the like to change their ways.
Governments need to get some 4/3 Pi R[] and hit organisation where it hurts, fines have no clout.
"fines have no clout."
Fines which scale with turnover have clout. Your cleaning lady won't be spending 4% of your annual turnover, possibly several times a year, unless you have a serious contamination problem or a barely visible turnover. And when things get serious it won't be your cleaning lady who goes to gaol, it will be the senior local management.
So lets round up, US meeting FB says FKU, UK meeting FB says FKU, EU meeting FB syas FKU, do we not just see a pattern were FB is telling the world to go FK themselves, they are too big, powerful, rich and laws to apply to them. Time to for the politicians to go after them big style like Microsoft, Intel and now Google !