Facebook's lies revealed... again

Remember when Mark Zuckerberg was asked, point-blank, if he'd implement GDPR-calibre provisions across all of Facebook, and he replied with some word salad that was meant to sound like an affirmative reply... but only after he'd first said that they wouldn't? It looks like his first answer to that question, i.e. that Facebook had no immediate plans to do this, was actually the truth.

From The Hill:

Facebook is moving to exempt 1.5 billion users in Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America from its terms of service as dictated under a new European Union regulation, according to a Reuters report.

The move comes weeks before the E.U.'s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is set to take effect. The rule addresses the protection of personal data shared outside the E.U.

By exempting so many of its members from the new regulation, Facebook would limit its liability under the new rule, which allows for fines of up to 4 percent of a company's global annual revenue for violations.

For Facebook, that could mean billions of dollars in potential fines, according to Reuters.
According to Reuters, the exemption would affect more than 70 percent of Facebook users worldwide. As of December, the social media platform had 239 million members in the U.S. and Canada, 370 million in Europe and 1.52 billion users in other parts of the world.

So, if you live in the EU, you'll be covered by GDPR, and if you live in the USA, you'll be covered by Facebook's GDPR-lite privacy policy, but if you're of the other 70% of Facebook's users, then you're fucked. And they didn't buy you a drink, first.

The way Facebook are implementing GDPR (in those few places where they are doing so) is drawing heavy criticism as well, as reported by TechCrunch:

In simple terms, seeking consent from users in a way that’s not fair because it’s manipulative means consent is not being freely given. Under GDPR, it won’t be consent at all. So Facebook appears to be seeing how close to the wind it can fly to test how regulators will respond.

Safe to say, EU lawmakers and NGOs are watching.

[...]

Data protection experts who TechCrunch spoke to suggest Facebook is failing to comply with, not just the spirit, but the letter of the law here. Some were exceeding blunt on this point.

“I am less impressed,” said law professor Mireille Hildebrandt discussing how Facebook is railroading users into consenting to its targeted advertising. “It seems they have announced that they will still require consent for targeted advertising and refuse the service if one does not agree. This violates [GDPR] art. 7.4 jo recital 43. So, yes, they will be taken to court.”

The best worst part of all this? Even the parts of the world that are getting GDPR coverage, are only going to be covered because Facebook has their international headquarters in Ireland... for tax reasons. That's right, it's only their shady tax evasion policy that's left Facebook exposed to GDPR in the first place. If not for that, they wouldn't be covering anybody.

Perhaps that's why people like Richard Stallman are speaking out for stronger regulation, as in his recent interview with New York Magazine:

We need a law. Fuck them — there’s no reason we should let them exist if the price is knowing everything about us. Let them disappear. They’re not important — our human rights are important. No company is so important that its existence justifies setting up a police state. And a police state is what we’re heading toward.

I can only agree. Fuck them. Fuck Mark Zuckerberg and his lying, android-like face, and fuck the horse he rode in on. Fuck Facebook.

#FacebookIsTheProblem
#DeleteFacebook