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Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

...that you can choose whether or not to use.

Thats not entirely true. Facebook will build a profile on you through like buttons and information shared from family/friends/acquaintances whether you choose to or not.

Why would I care about that if I don't use the product? How would anything that Facebook does affect someone who does not use it?

Well, someone could certainly take your photo and post it on Facebook without your knowledge and that could lead to serious consequences, however, one's photo could just as easily end up on reddit, imgur, HN or any other internet community. Incidentally, the photo posted on Facebook would at least not be indexed by google.

Not only post your picture, but friends can tag it with a name along with time and location, and now association with certain circles of friends. You are probably not going to get that kind of context with a picture on reddit or imgur.

What specific serious consequences could it lead to? Maybe Facebook has my photo through a friend, maybe it doesn't. I have no idea and have never needed to care.

I'm speaking generally, maybe you don't have to care, but that might not always necessarily be the case and certainly isn't the case for many people. For example, maybe you're supposed to be at work but a photo is taken of you at the beach. Maybe you're not supposed to be drinking (for legal or marital or personal reasons) but someone takes a photo of you at the bar. Maybe you told someone something that's not true but a photo ends up showing that to be a lie. I'm not saying these or similar scenarios will ever apply to you, but it's easy to see how someone who doesn't use Facebook could face serious consequences for a photo that they did not upload.

This is not unique to Facebook; Amazon, Google, Equifax and many other businesses build a profile on you regardless of whether you want them to or not.

Right, just in the same sense that Google and Equifax are not just websites, Facebook is not something you can entirely ignore without consequence.

Sure, but so what? How can some "profile" Facebook has on me affect my life in any way? I'm not going to be denied a loan because Facebook might know who some of my friends are. I've been ignoring Facebook without consequence for a decade.

[citation needed]

How can you even know if it doesn't affect you (either positively or negatively)?

I think the burden is on the person claiming bad effects to name examples of those bad effects. It’s silly to have to prove the non-existence of something you see no evidence of.

> just in the same sense that Google and Equifax are not just websites

My argument is that Google and Equifax are fundamentally different from Facebook, which amounts to pretty much just a website. Equifax obviously has immense impact on one's life because of the nature of the data they collect and their role in determining one's creditworthiness. Google also has a huge impact because of how critical their search product is to so many individuals and businesses. Facebook isn't really that important by comparison, it's just popular. For most people, Facebook is a silly addiction and time waster, using the site let's you view some photos and comments or maybe chat. That's it. It's just not a big deal.

I can't wait for GDPR.

Then facebook/google/whatever can't process data from me without consent (which they do not have without an account)..

"Under GDPR organizations in breach of GDPR can be fined up to 4% of annual global turnover or €20 Million (whichever is greater). This is the maximum fine that can be imposed for the most serious infringements e.g._not having sufficient customer consent to process data_ or violating the core of Privacy by Design concepts."

http://www.eugdpr.org/the-regulation.html

> can be fined up to 4% of annual global turnover

I'm not overly familar with the English terms for all these economic stats, but I think "turnover" is "revenue", and that's $27.638E9 [1] according to Wikipedia. So the fine would be about $1.1E9. On the same Wikipedia page, I see that their net income is some $10.217E9. Is "net income" the same as "profit"? If so, does that mean that even this massive fine would only be 10% of their profit?

If so, I can easily see "annual GDPR fine" becoming a standard bulletpoint in their earnings report, as long as Facebook thinks that the data collected is worth more than the fine.

[1] 1E9 = 1 billion

That sounds more like a tax than a fine.

The fine is "pr incident" afaik.

Not once a year

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