Norway to fine Meta $98,500 a day over user privacy breach from 14 August - eviltoast

Norway to fine Meta $98,500 a day over user privacy breach from 14 August::Country’s data protection regulator said firm cannot harvest user information such as physical locations for showing targeted ads

  • Zagorath@aussie.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    They don’t have to “make those demands”. They just need to keep fining the company if it fails to comply with the law in its own region.

    Meta can probably figure out a solution that complies, but if they can’t, then they have to decide whether to just suck up the fine, or address it worldwide.

    • Steeve@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      You missed a scenario though, ignore the fine and let Norway kick you out. Could probably even spin it that Norwegian regulators refused to work with them.

      • Magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        1 year ago

        Well at least Norway is standing up for their people. That is more than most governments are doing lately.

        • Steeve@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          They’re trying, I’ll give em that, but we’re seeing more and more that tech regulators can’t keep up with changing tech. We’re just starting to tackle data privacy and now we’ve got the whole new problem space of generative AI. There needs to be actual investment in fast, informed regulation.

          And honestly, “turn off targeted advertising” isn’t a reasonable demand for most countries, because, as much as everyone hates on it here, small business rely on targeted advertising and “go compete with Walmart for the same ad space” would suck for most economies.

          • Magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            I wholeheartedly agree with your first point. The second however does baffle me slightly. I’m not from Norway but I would not bet their small businesses are that reliant on targeted ad. But I could very much be wrong.

            Actually I’m not sur I understand why targeted ads, in the way Facebook is implementing them anyway, is that beneficial to small businesses. Bigger outfits have the means to litterally crush the small ones in this arena too.

            • Steeve@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              0
              ·
              1 year ago

              I’m Canadian, but our small businesses are definitely very reliant on targeted advertising. Anecdotally, I know a few people with their own businesses that will only use Google or Facebook targeted advertising, because it’s cheap and they get a better return on ad spend since they can target a local subpopulation.

              Bigger outfits have the means to litterally crush the small ones in this arena too.

              It doesn’t actually work that way, at least not entirely. Platforms don’t necessarily show the ad with the highest bid, they also take into account relevance to the user, so Walmart can’t just swoop in and take all the ad spots. Even if they could, platforms don’t charge unless the ad was shown (or clicked in some cases), so worst case scenario small businesses just wouldn’t have their account’s ad dollars spent. This definitely isn’t the case though, because 70% of small businesses advertiser on social media.

              There are additional studies that show this as well. I’ll try to find some that aren’t funded by Facebook or Google, so far this one is pretty interesting:

              https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.09035

              • Magnor@lemmy.magnor.ovh
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                I stand corrected then, thank you very much for the time and effort this post took. This is clearly an outlook I lacked.

            • Steeve@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              Ok, odd statement, but that’s fine, most policy regulators do give a flying fuck about the economy though