EU Targets Facebook's Ad System 170
redletterdave writes "The European Commission plans to put a stop to the way Facebook gathers information about its users, including their political opinions, religious beliefs, whereabouts and sexual preferences, and how the social network sells that information for commercial purposes. A new EC Directive aims to ban targeted advertising unless users specifically allow it, and to amend the current European data protection laws to ensure consistency in how offending sites are dealt with across the EU. If the European Commission has its way, Facebook would suffer big losses in advertising dollars that fund its site, which would further damage the company's plans to go public next year. Facebook has defended itself, claiming its advertisers target wide demographics like age and location, rather than specific individuals. The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company denies outright that it misuses or mishandles user information."
Re:More info here (Score:5, Interesting)
If they keep this up I might join you. The USA will probably make facebook accounts mandatory so the NSA can track us better.
Yes despite all the terrible press the EU gets especially in the UK, there are some nice things coming out of it like forcing mobile phone companies to all use mini-usb chargers. Sometimes I wish England would stop dicking about in EU and actually commit to something bigger than themselves for reasons other than personal greed.
People don't understand facebook (Score:5, Interesting)
To understand facebook it might help to use google as an analogy.
Google is an advertising company that happens to provide services that inspire people to see the ads that they sell.
Facebook is a data mining company that happens to provide services that inspire people to provide the data that they sell.
They both offer advertisements, the both do data mining. In many ways the companies are very very similar. The biggest difference is the interface that is presented to the public. They both offer most of their services in exchange for what they need to sell to make a living.
If you don't want to pay the price than don't take the service they offer. Or, just click the buttons to avoid telling the world about the things you'd rather the whole world not know.
/not a facebook fan and thinks people waste way too much time on it
Easy solution for facebook (Score:2, Interesting)
Only allow people to use their accounts if they agree to allow target advertisement... That would almost guarantee the majority will keep targeted advertisement over losing their accounts.
Anybody honestly believe such a law will have much effect on a site like facebook? This law would be more effective against sites where there isn't an incentive to keep an account. Of course, they could have a clause in the law that forbids such requiring permission to have an account but kinda doubt they thought of that.
Re:The Internet should not be regulated (Score:5, Interesting)
What about Facebook's constantly morphing privacy and security policies? How can the user protect their data from that?