>Meta said: “We fundamentally disagree with the claims made by Ms O’Carroll. No business can be mandated to give away its services for free."
The problem is that it's not entirely clear to most users that it's free because of targeted ads. Yes, we on HN are very aware of this, but it's not made explicitly clear to users upon registration. If you're going to make this argument, then you need to be honest and clear with your users up front.
Edit: And maybe give them an alternative if they don't like that option.
Edit 2: And to say this when you used to plaster on the homepage, "It's free, and always will be"? C'mon now.
Opting for a .com domain vs a .co.uk doesn't help.
Especially with a lot of UK papers printing "US editions" now - even the goddamn BBC redirects me to a "US news" site when I attempt to access BBC News. If I wanted US-centric news the BBC is probably the last place I'd check but I guess clicks and ad revenue reign supreme.
How does the legal process work in the UK? I really don't know. Would the loser pay the winner's legal costs by default, like in a lot of non US jurisdictions?
If that's how it works, in this case I doubt there's any UK judge whose "discretion" would prevent them from having Facebook pay that lady's legal costs.
Imagine that instead of simply leaving a site that refuses to show you content you actually want and respect your rights, you spend effort and money on a lengthy legal battle to force them to change.
It’s like if a drug dealer keeps mixing your cocaine with fent, you force them to give you the good stuff instead of just trying to end your coke habit altogether.
I think you must be very privileged to fight these kind of battles.
The difference becomes in that you never ultimately need to use the cocaine, however given lots of buisness' run almost exclusively on meta platforms like facebook/whatsapp/instagram, it is sometimes neccessary to use for things like customer support. Add in the fact that you can contact your MP and such on it and it stands to reason there is regulations. This is the same reason there are laws around radio stations, TV channels and newspapers. Either the state runs these forms of media, or we allow corporations to run it under the agreement that they do so under a decent set of rules in exchange for being allowed to profit.
It’s far too reductive to compare social media to a drug. Social media participation, for better or worse, is a part of today’s society. I would say you must be very privileged to be able to avoid it. Those of us who can, need to fight to protect people’s rights with something that is all around us, permeating our lives.
I think a better comparison could be a supermarket. Just because they sell cigarettes and alcohol doesn’t mean you can just not go there. You still need groceries.
Something that most Americans perhaps don't get in this debate on privacy - the rest of the world actually cares more about surveillance capitalism by private mega-corps vs the personal / national security oriented government surveillance.
The modern Internet is a privacy nightmare in large part due to advertisers. Having every aspect of your life surveiled, packaged, and sold is not a trivial issue.
The problem is that it's not entirely clear to most users that it's free because of targeted ads. Yes, we on HN are very aware of this, but it's not made explicitly clear to users upon registration. If you're going to make this argument, then you need to be honest and clear with your users up front.
Edit: And maybe give them an alternative if they don't like that option.
Edit 2: And to say this when you used to plaster on the homepage, "It's free, and always will be"? C'mon now.