Suppose I tell you a secret. You promise only to share it with others who will keep it a secret. You share my secret with Bob. Bob promises he won't share my secret. Bob shares my secret.
You broke your promise. You tried not to break it. But break it you did.
Then you face the legal consequences for doing so. Thats what prevents people from breaking them in first place. Unless you are arguing that all legal contracts are useless because they can be broken.
I am not asking about the logistics of leaking. Yes ofcourse its physically possible, I am asking why the consequences of breaking a contract don't matter in this specific case.
Contracts motivate you to adhere to some previously-agreed-upon behavior, and the degree to which they motivate you depends on how much the penalty actually penalizes you. In the case of large corporations, seemingly big penalties are often actually negligible in comparison, with the resulting motivation to adhere to the contract being negligible as well. That is one important reason why it is deliberately misleading to use the word "preventing" in the context in which Facebook uses it here. The other one is simply that it's factually wrong, even regardless of the size of the penalty.
Technically speaking, no contract was broken. When users signed up for Facebook, they clicked a button pursuant to which Facebook indemnified itself from everything under the sun. (It is unclear how enforceable those terms are. EULAs, for example, aren't very enforceable in the U.S. [1].)
Facebook did agree not to do these things with the FTC. (It also made some noises to the Congress, but I don't believe those were under oath.) And there are a lot of things it may have done which are illegal. But enforcing the law and consent decrees requires prosecutors to prosecute. We're waiting for that.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-user_license_agreement#Enf...
I am referring to this
> These partners signed agreements
not users.
The difference would be ignored if it hadn't been replicated in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. People are reasonably concerned about how much data Facebook is giving these third parties and how diligently it's ensuring they aren't retaining it.
These concerns are heightened by the existence of these agreements contradicting with (a) the FTC consent decree and (b) Zuckerberg's statement to Congress. It may also be material in the ongoing biometrics lawsuit in Illinois.
That sure sounds like a misrepresentation of what happened here. From the article: "These partners signed agreements that prevented people’s Facebook information from being used for any other purpose than to recreate Facebook-like experiences."
I don't think I would represent facebook as "paying" google with user's data just because Chrome has access to user data when a user visits the facebook website.
The burden is on the plaintiff to prove FB violated the agreement, that violation caused damage, and the value of that damage. The EULA doesn't say the user gets a pay out if FB admits (or is obviously caught) non-compliance with the agreement.
How do you show any actual damages?
Data watermarks, small changes (little tiny bits) that allows to track the leaks.
Also audit logs, you know who has what, etc. The topic has been hotly discussed with GDPR as the leaks have rather harsh consequences (beside being dragged through the mud, erm newspapers).
All that presumably is figured out before signing a agreement. Thats the whole point of an agreement vs pinky promise.