Privacy Commissioner Completes Facebook Review
September 23, 2010
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Law Bytes
Episode 273: Rebroadcast of the Globe and Mail’s The Decibel on Canada’s First Steps Towards a Social Media Ban
byMichael Geist

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Michael Geist
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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.