Surprised that the article didn’t mention the EUs incoming data protection laws (GDPR) compliance with which is bound to be costly for Facebook as well as shifting power towards individuals more broadly.
The unintended effect of GDPR, like other regulations aimed at particular industries, will be to entrench incumbents like Facebook and insulate them against competition.
Users will have to explicitly opt-in to advertising and tracking, and GDPR says you can't deny service to people who opt-out of these privacy protections. GDPR is pretty specific that you have to explain to users why you collect data, what you use it for, before you collect it, and then get their explicit opt-in to use it in that fashion.
Only my opinion but, Facebook will find a way around this. An easy strategy will be to annoy the users enough that they opt-in. For example, want to post a pic? It's seamless if you are opted-in, but your not, so click through these 10 screens while we explain why you should opt-in. Every time you post a pic, you have to view 10 screens. Most people will just opt-in. They won't quit the service or deal with the annoyances, they'll just opt-in.
They do the same if you don't enable push notifications in Messenger. Every time you open the app, "Won't you just let us send push notifications?" open a chat, "ENABLE PUSH NOTIFICATIONS NOW!" open another chat "You haven't enabled push notifications yet" ...
Reddit does the same thing. If you go to their mobile site, occasionally it blocks you and says "you really should download our app". And every update to the site makes more and more frustrating to use the mobile website.
I don't want your app. The site works fine until you broke it.
WhatsApp has a better image on this kind of stuff, but I’ve found it to be even more obnoxious when it comes to nagging you to enable push notifications.
You may be right. Facebook does a similar thing with ads, if you run a page/business, they heavily restrict who is going to see your posts. Unless, of course, you pay Facebook to display your posts as ads. Then everyone will see them... depending on how much you pay.
Yes, it would seem especially relevant to things like shadow profiles which are collections of data gathered and processed without consent. Further, it specifies ‘right to data portability’ and a ‘right to access’.
