Threads is the most fun, most interesting new product of the year, and no one in the E.U. can use it, or will be able to use it anytime soon, because their own elected officials passed a law that effectively bans it.
Nice job. Have fun over here in the library.
@party @stroughtonsmith @gruber I highly doubt the cookie acceptance requirement is what’s preventing Threads from launching in the EU. The cookie banners may be an unhelpful outcome of GDPR, but the fact that GDPR is preventing a Meta product from rolling out in my mind is proof that GDPR actually is protecting people.
I’d happily take useless acceptance banners if they came along with useful regulations and restrictions about what companies can do with data about me. #privacy
@emc Cookie banners are separate from GDPR. What GDPR asks for is a legal basis for processing user data in general.
Cookie banners are necessary only for privacy-invasive shit, not for functionality the visitor expects (e.g., sessions, shopping carts). Ditto, GDPR consent is only necessary if it's not required by the functionality the users/clients ask for, most commonly privacy-invasive shit.
People complaining of banners miss the forest from the trees.
@emc case in point: open any #Mastodon instance. Witness no cookie banners and no GDPR consent form. Also, notice no trackers blocked by uBlock Origin 😉
Back in the day, hackers seemed to care more about freedom and privacy. That spirit seems to be dying, replaced by the normalization of US-flavored spying on a massive scale.
I still remember Snowden's revelations or the Obama administration claiming non-citizens have no rights. Well, the EU reacted.
@stroughtonsmith @gruber Steve on point!
These are the moments when I don’t understand my American friends’ affinity for Wild West capitalism…
John, that same EU guarantees me that I have free healthcare in any EU country. If I break a leg in Germany or Spain, I’ll be treated the same and will not pay for it.
@michael @stroughtonsmith @gruber Take note, it makes only sure that you will be treated like a local.
Interestingly, how healthcare is handled is more or less up to the MS.
Thus the Irish have a healthcare system that is a mix of the European and a bit of the US one, forcing anyone above an income threshold to get a private insurance. (Which can lead to long waiting times when existing preconditions are uninsured.)
@pfernandes @stroughtonsmith @gruber You’re permeating the lies of surveillance capitalism. Europe isn’t catching up to anyone; GDRP is a strong, world-leading protection of privacy. And the cookie banners exist only due to malicious compliance by the surveillance capitalists.
Attached: 1 image @[email protected] @[email protected] The popups aren’t required, though. As long as the cookies are needed for the site to function, and are not used for data harvesting, analytics, or similar, implicit consent is fine. The consent only needs to be explicit if the site is harvesting its users. https://blog.getadmiral.com/cookie-consent-law-in-eu-us-uk-and-other-countries
@pfernandes @stroughtonsmith @gruber
I have been in the room when tech teams have had a good hard look at their databases, and set expiry polices on old tracking data. Why? GDPR compliance.
The knock-on effects in data leaks that never happened is large.
Characterising GDPR as merely bureaucracy and cookie banners is shallow and wrong.
@toon @gruber @stroughtonsmith Sorry for taking us further off topic.
What’s interesting to me is that John seems to have a bigger problem with the EU than Meta. A company that has shown repeatedly it cares more about profits than the privacy and wellbeing of its customers.
I sincerely wish Threads never arrives in the EU. Some may be excited by this new toy, you know who’s excited most? Zuck. That should give anyone pause.
@gruber @stroughtonsmith
Standing with @toon and @stevenodb here : https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/podcasts/the-daily/facebook-sri-lanka-violence.html
True, engineering and backend scale can be state-of-the-art - yet typical ethics behaviour is to stop marvelling at those once you see it used for malpractice.
Privacy in the EU is a feature, not a bug.
Could be a cultural thing - but therefore not to be thought lesser of. I'm sure we can delve up topics to reciprocate !
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