Facebook

[Phoenix520]

Poot snooper!

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Poot snooper!

[RTH10260]

Facebook owner Meta fined €1.2bn for mishandling user information
Penalty from Ireland’s privacy regulator is a record for breach of EU data protection regulation

Dan Milmo and Lisa O'Carroll
Mon 22 May 2023 19.39 BST

Facebook’s owner, Meta, has been fined a record €1.2bn (£1bn) and ordered to suspend the transfer of user data from the EU to the US.

The fine – equivalent to $1.3bn – imposed by Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), which regulates Meta across the EU, is a record for a breach of the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

The suspension of Facebook data transfers is not immediate and Meta has been given five months to implement it.

The DPC punishment relates to a legal challenge brought by an Austrian privacy campaigner, Max Schrems, over concerns resulting from the Edward Snowden revelations that European users’ data is not sufficiently protected from US intelligence agencies when it is transferred across the Atlantic.

Meta has also been given six months to stop “the unlawful processing, including storage, in the US” of personal EU data already transferred across the Atlantic, meaning that user data will need to be removed from Facebook servers.

The ruling does not affect data transfers at Meta’s other main platforms, Instagram and WhatsApp. Meta said it would appeal against the decision and seek a stay on the data transfer order.

The DPC said Meta infringed GDPR by continuing to transfer EU user data to the US without proper safeguards in place, despite a ruling by the European court of justice in 2020 requiring robust protection of that information. The CJEU ruled that data leaving the EU must have the same level of protection as it would have under GDPR when it reaches its destination outside the EU.

The regulator said data transferred by Facebook under a legal instrument called standard contractual clauses (SCCs) “did not address the risks to the fundamental rights and freedoms of data subjects that were identified by the [court of justice] in its judgment”.

Meta, whose EU base is in Ireland, said it had been “singled out” by the DPC despite thousands of other businesses using the same data transfer processes.



https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... nd-eu-meta

[RTH10260]

UK

NHS data breach: trusts shared patient details with Facebook without consent
Observer investigation reveals Meta Pixel tool passed on private details of web browsing on medical sites

Shanti Das
Sat 27 May 2023 18.34 BST

NHS trusts are sharing intimate details about patients’ medical conditions, appointments and treatments with Facebook without consent and despite promising never to do so.

An Observer investigation has uncovered a covert tracking tool in the websites of 20 NHS trusts which has for years collected browsing information and shared it with the tech giant in a major breach of privacy.

The data includes granular details of pages viewed, buttons clicked and keywords searched. It is matched to the user’s IP address – an identifier linked to an individual or household – and in many cases details of their Facebook account.

Information extracted by Meta Pixel can be used by Facebook’s parent company, Meta, for its own business purposes – including improving its targeted advertising services.

Records of information sent to the firm by NHS websites reveal it includes data which – when linked to an individual – could reveal personal medical details.

It was collected from patients who visited hundreds of NHS webpages about HIV, self-harm, gender identity services, sexual health, cancer, children’s treatment and more.

It also includes details of when web users clicked buttons to book an appointment, order a repeat prescription, request a referral or to complete an online counselling course. Millions of patients are potentially affected.

This weekend, 17 of the 20 NHS trusts that were using Meta Pixel confirmed they had pulled the tracking tool from their websites.

Eight issued apologies to patients. Multiple trusts said they had originally installed the tracking pixels to monitor recruitment or charity campaigns and were not aware that they were sending patient data to Facebook. The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) is investigating.




https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... ut-consent

A number of examples of what was leaked to Facebook / Meta further down in the article.

[raison de arizona]

The Canucks aren't going to be getting their news on Facebook anymore.

Rather Than Pay News Orgs, Facebook Bans Article Sharing in Canada

Canada’s Parliament recently passed Bill C-18, the Online News Act, which would require social media platforms to pay news organizations for posted articles. In response, Meta announced that it was going to ban article sharing in Canada rather than pay up.

The Online News Act received Royal Assent on Thursday, meaning it’s all set to become law after Parliament passed it. The law is expected to go into effect in six months. The Canadian government says that the bill asks social media companies to “bargain fairly with Canadian news businesses” for having their articles posted.

“[The Online News Act] levels the playing field by putting the power of big tech in check and ensuring that even our smallest news business can benefit through this regime and receive fair compensation for their work,” Pablo Rodriguez, Minister of Canadian Heritage, said in a statement.

The government says social media outlets are getting a clear benefit from users sharing articles. The companies not only sell advertising that appears near the articles, but sharing stories also boosts engagement and the value of the platform to users. In addition, the platforms can find out more about their users based on the type of stories they click on, obtaining their data for targeted advertising. With the Online News Act, smaller outlets are allowed the opportunity for collective bargaining with the tech giants.

Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, responded by saying Canadian news stories wouldn’t be available to Canadians on its platforms.

https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.c ... -facebook/

Seems like this is a backfire, it'll probably hurt Canadian news outlets more than it is going to help them. They just lost all their free viral publicity.

[RTH10260]

FWIW

[Slim Cognito]

A couple of years ago I posted two photos side by side on Facebook, one of trump holding up a bible and one of Hitler holding up a bible. It was removed for promoting hate speech. I tried to get it re-reviewed by explaining I was actually doing the opposite of promoting hate speech but the response I got was, it's a photo of Hitler, not allowed, end of story.

So, yeah, some word or photo probably triggered the ban and they aren't going to reconsider, no matter how much sense you make.

[RTH10260]

Facebook Rolls Out “Link History” Showing How it Tracks All The Websites Users Visit
For those still using Facebook, the setting is turned on by default.

By Cindy Harper
Posted 2:00 pm

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

Facebook, just like the rest of Big Tech, has historically made a great effort to track users across the internet, even when they are not logged into the platform, for data collecting and ultimately monetary reasons.

Now, reports say that a new way to achieve this has been recently launched by the giant, and notably, for the first time this type of tracking is made visible. Called Link History, the new feature is found in the Facebook app as essentially one of the permissions, and “documents” every link a user clicks while using the app.

Once again, fully in vein of what Google, Microsoft, etc., are doing, Facebook says the change – putting all links in one place – is there for better user experience, and again habitually, while the feature is not mandatory, it is there by default and “hiding” behind a pretty solid wall of an “opt-out.”

Whatever the case may be, most users don’t bother jumping over that wall, allowing corporations to at once offer a choice – and in most cases have it their way.





https://reclaimthenet.org/facebook-roll ... sers-visit

[Flatpoint High]

The Canucks aren't going to be getting their news on Facebook anymore.

Rather Than Pay News Orgs, Facebook Bans Article Sharing in Canada

Canada’s Parliament recently passed Bill C-18, the Online News Act, which would require social media platforms to pay news organizations for posted articles. In response, Meta announced that it was going to ban article sharing in Canada rather than pay up.

The Online News Act received Royal Assent on Thursday, meaning it’s all set to become law after Parliament passed it. The law is expected to go into effect in six months. The Canadian government says that the bill asks social media companies to “bargain fairly with Canadian news businesses” for having their articles posted.

“[The Online News Act] levels the playing field by putting the power of big tech in check and ensuring that even our smallest news business can benefit through this regime and receive fair compensation for their work,” Pablo Rodriguez, Minister of Canadian Heritage, said in a statement.

The government says social media outlets are getting a clear benefit from users sharing articles. The companies not only sell advertising that appears near the articles, but sharing stories also boosts engagement and the value of the platform to users. In addition, the platforms can find out more about their users based on the type of stories they click on, obtaining their data for targeted advertising. With the Online News Act, smaller outlets are allowed the opportunity for collective bargaining with the tech giants.

Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, responded by saying Canadian news stories wouldn’t be available to Canadians on its platforms.

https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.c ... -facebook/

Seems like this is a backfire, it'll probably hurt Canadian news outlets more than it is going to help them. They just lost all their free viral publicity.

I have a cousin living in Alberta, and he is already blocked from news on FB

[RTH10260]

I have a cousin living in Alberta, and he is already blocked from news on FB

A case for using a VPN service.

[neonzx]

I have a cousin living in Alberta, and he is already blocked from news on FB

A case for using a VPN service.

Or a case for not using FB makes more sense.

[RTH10260]

DAMN, Facebook ACTUALLY did it, fully shadowbanned

David Pakman Show
9 Jan 2024

-- Facebook has shadowbanned The David Pakman Show, putting the show into a "not recommendable" state in which views are down 95%

[RTH10260]

Facebook rules allow altered video casting Biden as paedophile, says board
Oversight committee attacks Meta’s ‘incoherent’ policy on misleadingly manipulated videos as too focused on AI

Reuters in New York
Mon 5 Feb 2024 13.50 CET

Meta’s oversight board has found that a Facebook video wrongfully suggesting that the US president, Joe Biden, is a paedophile does not violate the company’s current rules while deeming those rules “incoherent” and too narrowly focused on AI-generated content.

The board, which is funded by Meta – Facebook’s parent company – but run independently, took on the Biden video case in October in response to a user complaint about an altered seven-second video of the president.

It ruled that Meta was right to leave the video up under its current policy, which bars misleadingly altered videos only if they were produced by artificial intelligence or if they make people appear to say words they never actually said.

But the ruling is the first to critique Meta’s policy on “manipulated media” amid rising concerns about the potential use of new AI technologies to sway elections this year.

It said the policy “is lacking in persuasive justification, is incoherent and confusing to users, and fails to clearly specify the harms it is seeking to prevent”. It suggested Meta update it to cover both audio and video content and to apply labels identifying it as manipulated regardless of whether AI was used.

It stopped short of calling for the policy to apply to photographs, saying that doing so might make the policy too difficult to enforce at Meta’s scale.



https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... says-board?

[Slim Cognito]

Sounds like it's a good time to fire up the misleading trump videos (not that the real ones aren't bad enough). Cue up the Jeffrey Epstein pix/videos.

[MN-Skeptic]

Well, that's just rude.

It seems that Facebook is down. It didn't recognize my password. So... account compromised? So I said, change my password. Nope, error trying to do that. So I looked at Twitter and it appears that Facebook is down. Isn't that interesting?

[qbawl]

Yep, seeing this right now.

[Suranis]

Yep, Facebook is denying my content too. :*(

[Volkonski]

Same here. No Facebook.

[Suranis]

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/5/24091 ... signed-out

Facebook, Instagram, and Threads are all down. Whatsapp is working.

[realist]

Weird. Has been working fine for me all morning.

[raison de arizona]

Been down all morning here FWIW.

[Suranis]

https://downdetector.com/status/facebook/

Shows a big spike in reported down status.

[realist]

That is just so weird. I am having no problem with any of those sites. Perhap it's a regional thing of some sort? No idea really, but it/they is and has been working fine for me.

[sugar magnolia]

That is just so weird. I am having no problem with any of those sites. Perhap it's a regional thing of some sort? No idea really, but it/they is and has been working fine for me.

According to comments and news reports, it's worldwide.

[qbawl]

That is just so weird. I am having no problem with any of those sites. Perhap it's a regional thing of some sort? No idea really, but it/they is and has been working fine for me.

According to comments and news reports, it's worldwide.

Realist in a time warp‽