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Facebook & Instagram fined: How the small country of Norway could finally break Meta's business model. (tutanota.com)

submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Facebook & Instagram fined: How the small country of Norway could finally break Meta's business model.::With a fine of only $100,000 Norway could destroy Facebook's & Instagram's business model relying on personalized ads.

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[–] TrenchcoatFullofBats@belfry.rip 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A few additional facts that people may not be aware of:

Norway is not an EU country.
The population of Norway is 5.4 million. The fines appear to be calibrated to cancel out Meta’s profits from the illegal behavior Meta is using to generate those profits in Norway.
If it is not profitable for Meta to engage in those illegal behaviors in Norway, they will either stop breaking Norwegian law, or pull out of Norway entirely. Either way, it’s a win for Norway.

[–] ohlaph@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

I wish more countries would follow this.

[–] TrenchcoatFullofBats@belfry.rip 2 points 1 year ago

Norway is not an EU country.

Per the article, the fines appear to be targeted to cancel out Meta’s profits from the behavior Meta is using to generate those profits in Norway.

If it is not profitable for Meta to engage in those illegal behaviors in Norway, they will either stop breaking Norwegian law, or pull out of Norway entirely. Either way, it’s a win for Norway.

[+] i_understand@mastodon.social -27 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@L4s

Virtually every website uses targeted advertising. I guess the goal is to shut down the entire internet in EU countries.

I wonder how long that will last?

[–] awderon@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Did you read the whole article? It’s about behavioral advertising based on metrics that are not explicitly stated to the user. If the users opt in to this kind of advertising then it’s ok, but Facebook/meta has to get their agreement.

[–] exohuman@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Yeah, the sites themselves are going to either block Norway or turn off the ads for them. An overwhelmingly large portion of the internet uses targeted ads. This isn’t just a Facebook thing. For example, Google has an ad engine that runs on nearly every commercial website. This will take some work to comply with and I can see a lot of sites blocking Norway in the meantime.

[–] Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The issue isn't advertising per se, it's with so called targeted advertising aka surveillance capitalism. Meta could still legally serve ads in Norway so long as they are not individually targeted. You know, like all ads before Google and Facebook invented mass surveillance of internet users.

[–] TotallyNotADolphin@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

To be more specific, they can serve targeted advertisement, but only based on metrics explicitly provided to Meta. Such as your facebook profile and pages you like/follow/interact with on their platforms.

The issue they're being fined for is using data collected from everywhere else online that is being used to build a sort of cross web advertisement profile for different individuals, that they basically have no say og controll over.

For example, Meta can't track my browser history or activities on say lemmy to build an ad profile and then serve me ads based on that. They would have to use whatever data is actually generated by my Facebook profile that is mostly inactive

[–] awderon@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Just because most companies do it, doesn’t mean it’s ok.

It’s not about targeted ads based on information provided by the user of the service. If you have read the article you would know that they are banning behavioral advertising.

[–] felis_magnetus@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago

At which point we arrive at OP's closing remark: "Either way, it's a win for Norway." And that's hard to dispute for any country taking its claim to being a democracy even halfway serious, considering the manipulative shenanigans that are par for the course at anything Meta.

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