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Wolfie Christl Profile picture
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17 Feb, 10 tweets, 3 min read
Whatever you think about large publishers or the Australian legislative, Facebook blocking news content is an unprecedented abuse of power.

As a utility-scale platform, this is like a declaration of war on democracy and public debate.
about.fb.com/news/2021/02/c…
I mean, FB must just cease to exist.
I'm also in favor of taxing platform giants in a much more comprehensive way rather than introducing special interest legislation.

Whatever. FB simply went FAR too far here.

Not to mention it didn't even bother to take care about who they actually block.
Imagine there's a food safety law that affects supermarket chains and benefits other industry players. Everyone agrees it's not the perfect fix as a more comprehensive approach is required.

To stop the law supermarket chains start refusing to provide non-toxic food to everyone.
Facebook just didn't take care on anything.
Unbelievable.
Facebook blocking the sharing of news in Australia and blocking the world from sharing Australian news is the main issue.

Facebook not taking any precautions and actually mass blocking random stuff just comes on top of that.
Some argue it's not an abuse of power. I have the impression they have either long accepted platforms as private governments, or they lack an understanding of 'infrastructure' and the economy of platform power.

I dislike Murdoch, but FB taking a country hostage is unacceptable.

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More from @WolfieChristl

Wolfie Christl Profile picture
15 Feb
FB has access to massive personal information about its users. But this is not the whole story.

"We rely on data signals from user activity on websites and services we do not control"

This disclosure in FB's SEC filing explains a lot:
sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archiv…

HT @PrivacyMatters
First, the "GDPR, ePrivacy Directive, and CCPA, have impacted, and we expect will continue to impact, our ability to use such signals in our ad products".

Second, Apple/Google already do or may soon "limit the ability of application developers to collect and use these signals".
This is why Facebook is fighting browsers like Safari and Firefox introducing tracking protections and Apple's restrictions on mobile app tracking so hard.

And this is why Facebook has been fighting the GDPR, its enforcement and similar laws for years, and still does.
Read 8 tweets
Wolfie Christl Profile picture
13 Feb
While we're discussing how to hold Facebook accountable for messing with our social relationships and global public debate for profit, the company is silently yet constantly taking its aggressive data, attention and 'engagement' business to the next level.
s21.q4cdn.com/399680738/file… Image
Facebook still doesn't even have a category for expenses related to content moderation in its earnings reports.

Most likely, because expenses related to content moderation are just not significant for its business. Image
Instead, Facebook is trying to further maximize revenue per user by constantly optimizing user 'engagement', i.e. what we see and what we click, purely towards its business goals, without any significant consideration of how this affects people, groups, communities, societies. Image
Read 5 tweets
Wolfie Christl Profile picture
13 Feb
"We are trying to build a fundamental privacy model for the web with much stronger guarantees of privacy than existed before. I can't speak from the Ads perspective because I've never worked at Ads"

Interview with Chrome's security and 'privacy' director:
businessinsider.com/google-chrome-…
"Privacy policies are written in the broadest sense and what the privacy policy says is not intended to be, 'This is what it does,' it's, 'This is what could be done.' That part is outside my purview"

Unfortunately, he doesn't know much about Google's data practices.
"I do not know about plans regarding first-party advertising. We are building a system that is intended that all third-party advertising will rely on it"

Will G itself still use the full depth of individual-level data after restricting the third-party ecosystem? Probably yes.
Read 5 tweets
Wolfie Christl Profile picture
10 Feb
Council proposal for the EU ePrivacy regulation:
data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/S…

This, brought to you by publisher lobbyists, is bad: Image
And this looks unclear and/or just broken.

What is an "equivalent offer"? Would this allow "tracking or pay"?

The other recital basically doesn't say anything, does it?

("consent directly expressed by an end-user should always prevail") ImageImage
If so then bad. I want people to pay for content and quality journalism, but "tracking or pay" is unacceptable. Those who cannot afford to pay for myriads of subscriptions would continue being exposed to tracking. Acceptable: "non-intrusive ads or pay".
Read 13 tweets
Wolfie Christl Profile picture
9 Feb
Antitrust probes against Google data/advertising empire are much needed and very worthy. They bring light into the dark, but the conclusions are often a two-edged sword.

The Australian regulator seeks submissions for proposals that would increase data sharing with third parties.
The ACCC also seeks submissions for proposals to regulate Google's internal data sharing, from prohibiting certain data uses to purpose limitation...

This would also decrease Google's data advantage, and in my opinion this is the way to go, of course.
Very similar issues in the UK/CMA report:
Read 5 tweets
Wolfie Christl Profile picture
7 Feb
The CFPB "is preparing to change its rules on financial data, and a battle is brewing between existing financial institutions that control it, such as banks, and the upstart fintechs looking to unlock this data"

Fintechs want better financial data access:
protocol.com/cfpb-banks-fin…
"The fintech companies argue that this data belongs to consumers and they should be able to share it with whichever app or company they want"

Translation:

"This data belongs not only to banks and credit unions, but also to us, the fintechs. We want to exploit it, too"
Are traditional financial institutions exploiting financial data for business purposes? I'm sure they do.

Is it necessarily better if a wide range of fintech companies and apps are also able to exploit it, perhaps in even more invasive and problematic ways? Not sure.
Read 8 tweets

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