After holding a series of hearings in the wake of the Facebook -Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal this summer, and attending a meeting with Mark Zuckerberg himself in May, the European Union parliament’s civil liberties committee has called for an update to competition rules to reflect what it dubs “the digital reality”, urging EU institutions […]
View More Audit Facebook and overhaul competition law, say MEPs responding to breach scandalsCategory: terms of service
GDPR has cut ad trackers in Europe but helped Google, study suggests
An analysis of the impact of Europe’s new data protection framework, GDPR, on the adtech industry suggests the regulation has reduced the numbers of ad trackers that websites are hooking into EU visitors. But it also implies that Google may have slightly increased its marketshare in the region — indicating the adtech giant could be winning […]
View More GDPR has cut ad trackers in Europe but helped Google, study suggestsApple’s Tim Cook is sending a privacy bat-signal to US lawmakers
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has today been announced as the keynote speaker at a European data protection conference taking place in Brussels later this month — at a time when US lawmakers are asking tech giants outright if they’ll support “EU-like” privacy rules to shield US consumers from platform power. For a week this month Europe’s data […]
View More Apple’s Tim Cook is sending a privacy bat-signal to US lawmakersEurope is drawing fresh battle lines around the ethics of big data
It’s been just over four months since Europe’s tough new privacy framework came into force. You might believe that little of substance has changed for big tech’s data-hungry smooth operators since then — beyond firing out a wave of privacy policy update spam, and putting up a fresh cluster of consent pop-ups that are just […]
View More Europe is drawing fresh battle lines around the ethics of big dataFacebook is weaponizing security to erode privacy
At a Senate hearing this week in which US lawmakers quizzed tech giants on how they should go about drawing up comprehensive Federal consumer privacy protection legislation, Apple’s VP of software technology described privacy as a “core value” for the company. “We want your device to know everything about you but we don’t think we should,” Bud […]
View More Facebook is weaponizing security to erode privacyFrance records big jump in privacy complaints since GDPR
Another European data protection agency has reported a sharp rise in the numbers of complaints since the EU updated its privacy framework four months ago, when GDPR came into force, updating regional data protection rules and introducing much higher penalties for privacy violations. France’s CNIL agency said today that it’s received 3,767 complaints since May 25, when GDPR […]
View More France records big jump in privacy complaints since GDPRFacebook and Airbnb told to change their ToS to fix EU consumer rights issues by year’s end
Facebook has been singled out for censure by the European Commission’s head of consumer affairs who has warned she’s running out of patience and said the company needs to make additional changes to their terms of service before the end of the year to bring them into line with the bloc’s consumer rules. The Commission […]
View More Facebook and Airbnb told to change their ToS to fix EU consumer rights issues by year’s endApple, AT&T, Amazon, Google among tech giants called to Senate Commerce Committee
If you weren’t done watching tech giants get grilled by lawmakers, mark your calendar for September 26 in what’s expected to be another riveting round of questioning. Policy chiefs from AT&T and Charter, along with senior executives at Apple, Amazon, Google and Twitter will face questions from the Senate Commerce Committee later this month about […]
View More Apple, AT&T, Amazon, Google among tech giants called to Senate Commerce CommitteeFacebook has locked down its platform. Why that’s bad news for researchers.
/https%3A%2F%2Fblueprint-api-production.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fuploads%2Fcard%2Fimage%2F824387%2F5c2b1587-57ca-4036-b117-d366f4988bff.jpg)
File this under “lose-lose” for Facebook.
A group of high-profile researchers and journalists sent a formal request to social media giant to amend its Terms of Service in order to enable studies of Facebook that promote the public good. But either way Facebook responds could put the company in a tight spot.
The Knight First Amendment Institute sent a letter to Facebook about the way its Terms of Service apply to journalists and researchers. The letter was cosigned by journalists from the New York Times and several other publications as well as experts from handful of academic institutions.
They are asking Facebook to amend its ToS to include a “Safe Harbor” policy for people using Facebook for studies that benefit the public good. Facebook has locked down its platform in recent years, in large part to prevent more data scandals like Cambridge Analytica, but it’s also had the effect of also cutting off legitimate research about Facebook — the kind of research that wants to closely examine how content on the network is shared and distributed. Read more…
More about Facebook, Privacy, Journalism, Terms Of Service, and Tech
View More Facebook has locked down its platform. Why that’s bad news for researchers.One more thing re: “privacy concerns” raised by the DCMS fake new report…
A meaty first report by the UK parliamentary committee that’s been running an inquiry into online disinformation since fall 2017, including scrutinizing how people’s personal information was harvested from social media services like Facebook and used for voter profiling and the targeting of campaign ads — and whose chair, Damian Collins — is a member […]
View More One more thing re: “privacy concerns” raised by the DCMS fake new report…AI spots legal problems with tech T&Cs in GDPR research project
Technology is the proverbial double-edged sword. And an experimental European research project is ensuring this axiom cuts very close to the industry’s bone indeed by applying machine learning technology to critically sift big tech’s privacy policies — to see whether AI can automatically identify violations of data protection law. The still-in-training privacy policy and contract […]
View More AI spots legal problems with tech T&Cs in GDPR research projectFacebook, Google face first GDPR complaints over “forced consent”
After two years coming down the pipe at tech giants, Europe’s new privacy framework, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), is now being applied — and long time Facebook privacy critic, Max Schrems, has wasted no time in filing four complaints relating to (certain) companies’ ‘take it or leave it’ stance when it comes to consent. […]
View More Facebook, Google face first GDPR complaints over “forced consent”