Thread by @doctorow

Did your data get breached by Facebook in its vast, ghastly, 500,000,000 person valdez? The lovely folks at @digitalrightsie are suing Facebook under the #GDPR for money damages and they'd like to sign you up to be part of the lawsuit.

digitalrights.ie/facebook/

1/

You're eligible if you live in the EU and your data was leaked. And, thanks to the GDPR, your participation in the legal action could result in Facebook being on the hook for real cash damages.

digitalfreedomfund.org/the-power-of-c…

2/

A successful mass-action against Facebook with monetary damages will be a game-changer. That's because the data that Facebook gathers on us is very nearly worthless, and the company's vast profits depend on even more vast collection and cheap, reckless, sloppy data-handling.

3/

Data isn't the new oil, it's the new oily rag, a highly flammable source of the very lowest grade of crude, only profitable if you acquire it for next to nothing, stockpile it in unimaginable quantities, and fail to invest in prudent fire-suppression.

locusmag.com/2018/07/cory-d…

4/

The DRI action is an example of the power of privacy laws to tip the balance against dangerous business-models. It relies on the GDPR, the flawed, first-of-its-kind privacy law passed in 2016, whose major initial impact was to drive the European ad-tech sector to extinction.

5/

Ad-tech is a hugely concentrated industry, with two US companies - FB and Google - accounting for the vast majority of the business, which has turned into a rigged casino where the house always wins, defrauding publishers, advertisers, and users:

pluralistic.net/2021/04/11/hal…

6/

Despite this, Googbook are in it for the long-haul and have been generally careful to keep their bad actions below the threshold for extinction-level enforcement events. They're conservative fraudsters - unlike the scrappy scumbags chasing the table-scraps they left behind.

7/

These scrappers - including the largely defunct EU ad-tech sector - are not in it for the long haul. They have a certain amount of runway, and either they attain profitability before it runs out, or they crash and burn.

8/

Googbook plays it safe so it can play again tomorrow, but the little guys play it fast and loose because they don't know if they'll even have a tomorrow.

9/

On top of that, Googbook has a vast war-chest of retained supernormal profits that it can spend to defend itself when it gets into hot water, so it can get away with stuff that annihilates the little firms at first contact.

10/

That's why, five years into the GDPR epoch, the US Big Tech/ad-tech duopoly that inspired its passage are stronger than ever, and the EU tech sector the GDPR was supposed to help has faced sizable closures.

11/

But this might just be the turning point. The GDPR has a form of "private right of action": the right of people who've been wronged to bring their own legal action against the companies that had harmed them.

12/

And it includes monetary damages, which can make the difference between profitable and unprofitable commercial surveillance.

13/

The combination means that DRI can fundraise to hire lawyers to represent millions of Europeans together, without having to convince a regulator or state attorney to take up their cause. Like I said, it's a potential game-changer.

14/

This is all the more notable because of the current US debate about both state-level privacy laws and a national privacy law, in which the Serious People in the Room insist that a private right of action is off the table, because Big Tech won't stand for it.

15/

That, of course, is exactly why we need it. Googbook's tolerance for a privacy law that can only be enforced by AGs and DAs is a gamble that they can arm-twist, lobby, or sweet-talk government law-enforcers into wrist-slaps forever.

16/

In the hands of law enforcement officials, the GDPR did nothing to curb Googbook's bad behavior. In the hands of the people it might result in sweeping changes.

That's why a private right of action should be the minimum standard for every privacy law, state and federal.

eof/

ETA - If you'd like an unrolled version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

pluralistic.net/2021/04/16/whe…