Privacy Commissioner Completes Facebook Review
September 23, 2010
Share this post
One Comment

Law Bytes
Episode 277: Kate Robertson on the Risks That Lie Behind Canada's Unexpected Signing of the UN Cybercrime Convention
byMichael Geist

June 22, 2026
Michael Geist
Search Results placeholder
Michael Geist on Substack
Recent Posts
Why the Answers to Hateful Content Online are Hiding in the Platforms’ Own Rules
From CCH to ChatGPT: How Canadian Copyright Law Played the Key Role in Deciding a Leading AI Training Data Case in India
Starting Over: Court Filing Confirms the CRTC’s Streamer Contribution Decisions Are Dead With a Full Online Streaming Act Reset to Come
The Name on the Window Was Enough: The Attacks on Kiva’s and the Normalization of Antisemitic Violence in Canada
The Law Bytes Podcast, Episode 277: Kate Robertson on the Risks That Lie Behind Canada’s Unexpected Signing of the UN Cybercrime Convention

It’s like saying they got a room full of alcoholics to quit drinking!
Sure, Facebook will put on the dog and pony show for the Privacy Commission – it doesn’t mean there is actually any intention of changing their business model, which is entirely built around the very things that need to violate privacy.
Thousands of today’s sites are regularly selling out their users’ privacy, without their informed consent, as a standard practice. Practically every site you migrate to now initiates a number of third-party connections right from the first page. These connections are quite often “mandatory”, in order to see the page, as barring them causes the page to fail. (Holding the page “hostage” unless you allow yourself to be tracked.)
There’s no way in hell these third parties are going to comply with privacy demands, as doing so is contrary to their mission. And, Facebook has far too many participating third parties contributing to its datamining wet dream.
The idea of Facebook actually giving the users any control over this activity is a direct affront to Facebook’s business model. Any “controls” offered to the users are false ones – all your information is being shared with all those third parties, regardless of your settings – and that will never change.