I only give Facebook Messenger access to photos that I need to share. Not more, because I don't trust them not to abuse our relationship and misuse anything they can put their hands on, including photos and documents I don't mean to share.
Am I wrong and paranoid? Maybe, but it's not my fault that that's my perception of big tech. It's their own actions.
And that an average Joe doesn't realize how much access to his private life he gives them? Looks like somebody decided that these predatory tactics are not cool and even people not in the know should be protected.
In the old days, it was also considered strange to give away your more personal property to a stranger for free. Diaries were private. Preserving privacy is just a normal thing people do. Technical literacy just shows you ways of doing so that others might overlook due to a lack of technical literacy.
This seems far from paranoid and rather more like a sane default. It’s on of my favorite features regarding sharing photos. On desktop if you want to send photos to a site you would upload them one by one, it would be madness if a site requested “Oh yeah just upload your entire photos directory just in case for more convenience, we promise we’ll only use the ones you select ;)”
I wish articles like this would be more technically vigorous.
What actually happened here? Was the Facebook app uploading every photo on your phone in order to run a bit of ML to help recommend images that might be a good fit for specific posts? Were they doing ML stuff on the device directly? Were they doing anything else with the photos aside from powering this "suggested image" feature?
I get that Rapporteur.com might not be the best venue to answer these questions, but I'd be shocked if any coverage of this story got into the details of how this stuff actually worked.
That might mean stepping outside your comfort zone though so you won't. You clinged to the pelican test way too long; attention so easily gamed
You will appeal to everyone else to go above and beyond. After-all you're a tech genius when so many are not; get on a level everyone else.
...your kind of entitled attitude while your effort to 8 billion others is "basic ass computer nerd" is wild; that bizarre ass belief in American exceptionalism so satisfy my expectations world!
Millennial IT folks; the days of being a hero to grandma cause you set up her Outlook Express are long gone. New generations are gonna view you like many view 99 year old Senators in Congress.
Your social skills in tech are no longer cool and worthy of effusive praise.
From someone who successfully FIRED in 2023; you all are not truly interested just so stuck in routine you don't know what else to do
> According to Italy’s regulator, Facebook requested access to the gallery via a single authorisation valid for the entire app, preceded by a generic notice requesting enabling of other features, which did not allow users to understand that they were also authorising suggestions from their gallery.
Yeah, I think normal people will accept the app permission to their gallery in order to send a photo. It seems reasonable to be able to opt-in to this very basic functionality of a messaging app without also implicitly consenting to FB training ML models on your entire library.
I wish, but unfortunately EU countries don't fine Big Tech enough and Big Tech just keeps breaking the law, treating the fines as normal cost of operation. Meta in particular is just profiteering on crime (phishing/fake ads) at this point, there are many leaked internal documents about it.
The US regulatory apparatus has been asleep at the wheel for 25+ years.
Not only do people need to be protected, but frankly these big tech companies are ossified and unimaginative. They will not be anti-fragile in the face of disruption, because their metabolism relies upon infinite growth and sprawl that will come under attack.
I know there will be lots of back and forth about whether or not Meta deserves this fine. But the broader question I have is whether there are regulators anywhere that allow companies to pre-register their products and get a "compliance certification" beforehand.
That is, there are obviously lots of gray areas in regulations. I would be less sympathetic to the view that these aren't just cash grabs by governments if these governments provided a service to say whether a particular product in a current form was compliant. This is essentially what the FDA does with drugs, why not with other consumer products?
EU member states won't hesitate to milk the tech cows of the silicon valley. I feel good about it. The data-hungry social apps with addition forced by algorithm, unleashed by the mega tech on the world, should be countered.
While I'm unhappy about lots of the regulation coming from the EU lately; this is one of the things that has the potential to actually make the world a better place.
If that is wroth 805M fine I am sure there will fine Samsung and other TV makers by at least 10x that for listening to you even when TV is off and then actually re-selling your data to 3rd parties (which Meta doesn't do).
That is to say this fine feels very disproportional to me.
Now I'm imagining something like "When I copy and pasted that text from my uncle Gigi that said that Facebook was not authorized to use my content, they didn't respect that!"
They actually don't care, it is an expected spending line in the excel. They already counted (what it'll make us - what it'll cost us in fines) = big positive number many years ago.
90% of Europeans use WhatsApp’s free services as their daily communication tool and throw a fit if you ever dare ask them to pay for software. Meanwhile the EU continues to rely on fines to fund its bureaucracy. But eventually it won’t make financial sense for these companies to serve Europe anymore, and the regulations and culture basically prohibit any local company from providing the same functionality.
As an Italian I’d be delighted if Meta upped and left the local market. They’ve done nothing but harm. The fact they stay is proof that our citizens are financially profitable for them, even when (as you point out) they provide software for free, because we are the product.
It sure is not, but compared to an Average Joe’s wallet, it’s a drop in a bucket for him. At the end of the day this price is the cost they are paying for doing business in free mode.
What is this financially illiterate nonsense? It's a fine that is certainly high enough that it incentives change (you don't want a repeat €805m fine on your balance sheet) and presumably that is what we care about. Because we are adults, and it's not about vengeance. It's about pushing people to do the right thing. Right?
Wrong! These fines for them are just cost of doing business.
You might naively believe that these fines would move the needle, but nothing is going to change unless these billionaires a. Are blocked from doing business unless they act appropriately or b. Go into jail
Am I wrong and paranoid? Maybe, but it's not my fault that that's my perception of big tech. It's their own actions.
And that an average Joe doesn't realize how much access to his private life he gives them? Looks like somebody decided that these predatory tactics are not cool and even people not in the know should be protected.
If I was you I’d go further. In fact, I have, I deleted all my Meta accounts.
Encourage your friends and family to move to something better like Signal.
What actually happened here? Was the Facebook app uploading every photo on your phone in order to run a bit of ML to help recommend images that might be a good fit for specific posts? Were they doing ML stuff on the device directly? Were they doing anything else with the photos aside from powering this "suggested image" feature?
I get that Rapporteur.com might not be the best venue to answer these questions, but I'd be shocked if any coverage of this story got into the details of how this stuff actually worked.
https://www.garanteprivacy.it/home/docweb/-/docweb-display/d...
That might mean stepping outside your comfort zone though so you won't. You clinged to the pelican test way too long; attention so easily gamed
You will appeal to everyone else to go above and beyond. After-all you're a tech genius when so many are not; get on a level everyone else.
...your kind of entitled attitude while your effort to 8 billion others is "basic ass computer nerd" is wild; that bizarre ass belief in American exceptionalism so satisfy my expectations world!
Millennial IT folks; the days of being a hero to grandma cause you set up her Outlook Express are long gone. New generations are gonna view you like many view 99 year old Senators in Congress.
Your social skills in tech are no longer cool and worthy of effusive praise.
From someone who successfully FIRED in 2023; you all are not truly interested just so stuck in routine you don't know what else to do
This sounds so benign to me.
Not sure about this particular case.
Not only do people need to be protected, but frankly these big tech companies are ossified and unimaginative. They will not be anti-fragile in the face of disruption, because their metabolism relies upon infinite growth and sprawl that will come under attack.
That is, there are obviously lots of gray areas in regulations. I would be less sympathetic to the view that these aren't just cash grabs by governments if these governments provided a service to say whether a particular product in a current form was compliant. This is essentially what the FDA does with drugs, why not with other consumer products?
That is to say this fine feels very disproportional to me.
A continent of deeply unserious people.
This is not true, big tech fines are small compared to country budgets
Right...?
You might naively believe that these fines would move the needle, but nothing is going to change unless these billionaires a. Are blocked from doing business unless they act appropriately or b. Go into jail