Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/07/zuckerbackpfeifengesicht.html
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Federal Cartel Office? We are but a humble Book of Faces!
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What do you call Facebook Exit? Fexit?
Hoping the trend spreads.
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AMEN! We need strong regulation in the USA. I am not against targeted ads, I am against secret data stores and no consumer-side ability to meaningfully limit any and all data desired at any moment. This is not a hard technical problem to solve, at ALL. Consumers have for over a century (I think?) willingly provided personal data to vendors, in the forms of questionnaires, etc.
I for one will gladly select a decent amount of useful information to provide advertisers, so I stop getting freaking awful drug ads constantly (although they should be banned entirely). But I want full access to the data stores with read/write and useful and granular permissions.
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Fruxit. Fruxit all, anyway.
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“failing to use it amounts to opting out of large slices of civic life”
Yeah, I feel that part. I’m an ex-pat who’s been living in Taiwan for 8 years or so now. I finally quit Facebook in disgust about a year and a half ago, and it seriously makes life difficult. All events in the western community are promoted and discussed pretty much entirely on Facebook. No smaller local events make it to Reddit or the like, nobody prints posters, and seeing as I no longer drink nor have the time to go out much, I can’t rely on word of mouth. No private company should have that kind of control over huge chunks of daily life. Especially not such a bunch of insidious, sociopathic creeps as Team Zuck.
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Congratulations, Germany! May many other countries follow suit.
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No, alas, it didn’t.
But it’s a start.
Pretty good summary on El Reg:
It won’t inbox for some reason or other, but here is the official press release:
https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/SharedDocs/Meldung/DE/Pressemitteilungen/2019/07_02_2019_Facebook.html
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Yes and since most of those company are based in the US the whole world would benefit from a better regulation.
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I thought some time ago that a workaround would be to get a very cheap tablet and only use it for FB. My cellphone and computer would stay FB free and the tablet would have no other data.
FB makes it difficult by requiring a phone number. Giving the one of my cellphone would defeat the purpose, so I needed a cheap phone and not a cheap tablet.
The people on FB made it even more difficult by redirecting all the communication they had with me via FB (as in “why use email if you are on FB?”) and expecting me to respond within 30s, as if FB was installed on my smartphone and not on a tablet I left at home.
In the end, it was not worth it.
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Naively, I think there would be an emerging market for Facebook proxy services. Rather than signing on yourself, you sign on to the proxy (who is on Facebook). The proxy service would allow you to follow news and events (and even reply) without passing on any personal data you don’t explicitly consent to. A browser plugin could intercept any callbacks to Facebook and route them through the proxy instead. You’d pay for the service either by subscription fee or watching advertisements, and you get fine-grained control over privacy settings.
Of course Facebook wouldn’t allow this, but since they’re practically a carrier by now they would have a hard time defending their position as not being a monopoly.
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Shhh! Suggesting that regulations might benefit other countries might be the only way to make Republicans even more rabidly opposed to them. 'Murica!
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Yeah, @doctorow had suggested something like this at one point, and I’d sign up to that service in a heartbeat. But the way it is, you’d be in breach of the TOC or something and I wouldn’t want to be the company trying to force that through court…
Facebook [has said it will appeal]
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Germany:
(reads post)
(reads post)
(reads post)
“Entfreund”
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How would it be to have a government that prioritizes citizens over corporations, and understands that ‘we had permission’ is a load of gorgonshit?
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I’d say that’s all or in part down to the fb for signing into other websites…
as if you did not know 
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If Facebook wins this in court, however, this will be bad. Very bad indeed.
I hope the Kartellamt’s lawyers checked and double checked their options and chances of success…
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Furzkrieg!
…shtonk.
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