2y ago

Facebook, Instagram face Norwegian ban from tracking users for ads

www.politico.eu

4 comments

Only for three months, though, because:
The Irish regulator oversees Meta under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for the whole of Europe because the tech company has its regional headquarters there. Other European countries such as Norway are able to issue national decisions for a time limit of three months in a "case of urgency" under the GDPR.
I guess it raises a fundamental question: If not ads, what else would Facebook male money off? Running the operations is costly and something has to pay for it.
I am aware that Norways ban is temporary (and I'm hella glad that at least the EU/European countries stand up to big tech on data security), but just not allowing the use of user data will probably not work as a solution.
Wikipedia's model sounds nice, but the cost of operations are by magnitudes different. I think it's a question that will also affect other platforms (like it did affect reddit and will affect Lemmy at some point).
- They created a business model around violating user privacy. Imagine if I asked "if slavery is no longer legal, how will the cotton fields be profitable?"
  So, now being more realistic, just do ads without tracking people. Maybe ask people which types of ads they want to see instead of fucking spying on them to know every detail of their lives.
- You can show ads without tracking the user and violate privacy. But they are not just selling ads, they also collect user data and sell that. So, the correct question would be, how can they adapt to survive on just selling ads?