Germany vs. Facebook: Like Button Declared Illegal, Sites Threatened With Fine

http://siliconfilter.com/germany-vs-facebook-like-button-declared-illegal-sites-threatened-with-fine/

by flardinois • 15 years ago

74 74 15 years ago

coderdude5• 15 years ago

It's always funny when a little country like Germany or France wants to "ban the Internet" or something. It's kind of cute.

Edit: Man, I sure have offended a lot of people. I really didn't mean to make it seem like you're insignificant, or that the decisions you make are ridiculous and not well thought out when it comes to the Web. I think you guys are doing a great job!

Keep up all this good work and maybe one day we'll relinquish our control of the root name servers over to you.

drzaiusapelord• 15 years ago

Little? Germany is one of the world's massive economies.

Whats cute is Americans who think regulating business is something we should never do and privacy laws are bullshit. Sorry, but it looks like the rest of the world isn't so lassiz-faire.

coderdude5• 15 years ago

Little as in its size and population, as well as how no one cares what Germany does with their Internet (except for Germans, of course). What's really cute is how people whine about privacy but use the Web. Two things that clash entirely at a fundamental level (the client-server model).

tzs2• 15 years ago

Not all privacy laws are bullshit...but this one sure seems to be. The "Like" button (and the "1+" button, and the buttons to submit to Reddit, HN, and the like, which would all be covered) are completely optional for the visitor to the site. They don't have to click them unless they want to.

The same argument they are using against these buttons applies to off-site hyperlinks in general. Are those going to be banned in the name of privacy?

BasDirks2• 15 years ago

It's so cheap to use something like this to vent your feelings of superiority. Also "ban the internet or something" doesn't really work for me as meaningful analysis. Clearly similar legislation and the clash of internet ideals vs bureaucracy is not at all limited to "us Euro-trash" wink.

coderdude5• 15 years ago

This was certainly not about feelings of superiority. It was more about how every now and then we hear about some country somewhere wanting to do ridiculous things like ban a widget and fine you 50,000 euros if you have it on your site. That doesn't sound retarded to you?

maigret4• 15 years ago

Many germans use local mail providers because providers are legally constrained to handle user data better than US providers. EU privacy laws are not such a bad thing. Of course sometimes they are very local judgements happening that makes the news, but that's not like that never happens in the US... Amazon and Texas, does it tell you something?

coderdude5• 15 years ago

I think you make a good point. What I said also applies when one of our states makes the same kind of decision. I think it's dumb when Texas does weird stuff like this too, for example.

rapala• 15 years ago

Those are probably the worst two countries to choose as an example. Germany and France have a huge influence on the EU.

Luc• 15 years ago

Trolling is not cool, man.

Permit• 15 years ago

This seems a bit too much for me, personally. Does Germany take issue with Google Analytics as well? They take all kinds of data about users and send it back to US servers.

If I was hosting a site in Germany, I'd probably tend to switch hosting before I removed the "Like" button from my website.

tst• 15 years ago

Yes: http://thenextweb.com/eu/2011/01/13/german-google-analytics-...

However, I've never heard of someone paying this fine.

maigret4• 15 years ago

Google Analytics was on a grey zone until this year, it seem to have taken some modification to conform the local law.

icebraining2• 15 years ago

>Does Germany take issue with Google Analytics as well?

I hope so. Subjecting users to tracking by Google without their consent (you have no way to know that website X is tracking before it does) seems very abusive to me. Nothing prevents webmasters from installing tracking software on their own servers.

sarnowski2• 15 years ago

As already mentioned, Google Analytics also had to reduce the data send to US servers. It is (more or less) forbidden to generally log IP addresses now (the big web hosters already anonymize their log files - the default apache logfile format is somehow illegal in Germany now).

I am german myself and fully agree with the privacy enforcing people in Germany and EU. Everytime you visit a website where someone added a Like button a whole set of tracking data will be submitted to US servers without a chance for me to forbid this. (Never saw a message "Is it ok for you that I load the Facebook Like button where your data will be transmitted to Facebook?") And after Facebook has a nearly complete profile over my web activities (every 2nd page already has a Like button) practically the US government also has all those data (edit: for fairness: everyone who pays for the data too)

nettdata• 15 years ago

I like this.

Creyels• 15 years ago

The article is kind of misleading. After reading the original FAZ article (I am german and a site owner) I learned that because Weichert is the head of the Independent Centre for Privacy Protection of the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, he only has the competence to threat site owners within "Schleswig-Holstein" (Population: 2,8mio).

ugh2• 15 years ago

With only a few exceptions, privacy and data protection is handled on the state (or Länder) level in Germany. (One exception to this is the federal government and its data protection.)

He would have to convince his fifteen colleagues to make this a Germany-wide thing. Handling this on the federal level is not even possible in Germany, the federal data protection appointee has nothing to say about such matters.

_snsh• 15 years ago

But the TMG as well as the BDSG are federal laws and after reading his paper I would agree with his view of them.

It would only take someone to go to their local data protection supervisor (Datenschutzbeauftragten) and complain about being tracked by the facebook like button on a site hosted in germany, the data protection supervisor would have to issue a fine (if he agrees with that interpretation of the law) and it would go to court, since the owner of the website would naturally dispute it.

Difficult to say how the court would rule.

philp9• 15 years ago

The situation is actually quite a bit different from what was presented in the siliconfilter article. I looked into a couple of more established local media outlets and it turns out that this fine does not apply to all of Germany. Mr. Weichert strictly targets sites from Schleswig-Holstein ( Population: 2,8M ). This is the only state where he has 'some' legislative power and it remains to be seen how we would be able to target sites from his specific district. I'm sure you can appreciate the technical difficulty. This is also not a new law but a highly controversial interpretation of existing privacy law. There is a tremendous backlash and open opposition coming from high-ranking German politicians regarding this fine. All in all the whole thing looks more like a PR-stunt, it's highly unlikely that website-owners will ever be fined in the near future for Facebook buttons.

philp9• 15 years ago

I'm German btw. Don't want anybody to think I learned that gruesome language for the fun of it...

mitchty2• 15 years ago

I'm American, whats so bad about it? Was easier to learn than French coming from an English speaking background. Not that I think I'm fluent in either.

tluyben23• 15 years ago

I'm not German, I learned that great language for the fun of it. I wanted to be able to read "Über formal unentscheidbare Sätze der Principia Mathematica und verwandter Systeme, I." after I read Gödel, Escher, Bach when I was in college. And read Böll untranslated. Much better than the English versions imho.

cageface• 15 years ago

Mark Twain wrote a satirical but very funny critique of German:

http://www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/awfgrmlg.html

josscrowcroft• 15 years ago

This seems like one of those "Oh man, what a crazy country!" stories - and sure, the €50,000 file is pretty nuts - but the more I read about it, the more I think that challenging one company's dominance is potentially a good thing.

If nobody ever speaks up and says "Hey, hang on - how much info are we giving them, really?" it'd be far too easy for companies to take advantage..

Having said that ... this won't stick. By this virtue, sites would have to remove G+ buttons too, and Google Analytics (which profiles 'anonymous' users even more heavily than FB)

nextparadigms• 15 years ago

That might be the key difference. Analytics profiles "anonymous" users.Facebook knows exactly who you are.

sarnowski2• 15 years ago

I guess if you use a gmail account, a g+ account or some other google account all the tracking stuff can be connected to you.

philp9• 15 years ago

Being German I have to say I really appreciate my countries concern with privacy. ( Despite this rather ridiculous attempt to protect it ) The mega-corporations that are hoarding our data have a habit of being as in-transparent about privacy as possible ( Google excluded, maybe ). Government entities are in a unique position to enact legislation that levels the playing field and puts consumers back in charge of their data. I'm hopeful that future generations will demand unrestricted control over their personal data as a basic human right.

blauwbilgorgel2• 15 years ago

How do you see the difference between Opt-in and Opt-out?

For example, I never asked for Google Streetview to photograph my property, so in that sense they might have violated my privacy.

But clicking a Like! button is like giving implicit approval to send some relevant data to Facebook.

If you were a German Facebook fan, would this law make it impossible to place a Like! button on your own site, when you and your visitors clearly want it?

Is it possible to voluntarily wave away the right to privacy or is it really an all-or-nothing deal?

Edit: It seems that you get logged without ever clicking the button, or lack a Facebook account...

The paper "Facebook Tracks and Traces Everyone: Like This!" mentions 3 valid privacy violations by Facebook.

  informational self-determination: the individual should 
  be able to decide which data are disclosed to whom and 
  for what purpose.

  contextual integrity: data has to be treated according to
  the norms applicable to the context in which 
  the data was disclosed.

  data transfer without consent: data should not be 
  transferred to another context without the individual's
  consent

Abstract:

  [the Like button] is also used to place cookies on the 
  user’s computer,  regardless whether a user actually uses 
  the button when visiting a website. As an alternative 
  business model this allows Facebook to track and trace 
  users and to process their data. It appears that 
  non-Facebook members can also be traced via the Like 
  button.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1717563

Ah, well. Back to a custom Facebook Share button for me.

Atropos2• 15 years ago

I'm from Germany and I'm currently writing a dissertation (similiar to PhD) on data protection law. My take on the situation:

1) Are the european data protection laws "perfect" or reasonable? No, they can't be, the most relevant directive is from the year 1995.

2) Do Google or Facebook comply with the European data protection standard? No way. Do they even try? No. There is something called the "Safe Harbor Directive" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_Harbor_Principles) which Facebook and Google have declared to uphold. However they "self-certify" and in reality it is more like a "scam". For example Facebook is boasting about a "TRUSTe" certificate, which is practically a joke.(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRUSTe)

However the story about the 50,000€ fine is just for publicity. Google has lost cases in civil court against consumer protection agencies about their privacy policy, but to date there has never been a fine by a government agency. Furthermore just because the law says "up to 50,000" as a maximum sentence doesn't mean you could realistically go that high.

jpiasetz• 15 years ago

I'm all for stronger privacy laws however banning analytics and forcing Google to pixelate houses does more harm then good.

Laws like that give people a false sense of privacy. House is still visible from the street and private info can still be tracked online.

Privacy advocate should focus on education and making sure it's explained what is shared with who. If it's clear what you're sharing by signing up to a service and everyone understand what that means we would all be better off.

jonalexr• 15 years ago

I was thinking about this a couple of days ago - with Like buttons appearing all over the internet, Facebook has the ability to log what sites you visit, when you visit them, etc. Question is, do they? To what extent?

Tichy2• 15 years ago

Of course they do. To the maximum extent they can manage. As the saying goes: if you are using a web service for free, you are not their customer, you are their product (or something like that).

icebraining2• 15 years ago

Paying is irrelevant. How many websites hide the FB buttons if you subscribe to them?

finiteloop• 15 years ago

The purpose of the Like button is to enable you to share stuff back to Facebook when you click on it. We anonymize all logging data collected as a byproduct of serving the Like button and other social plugins within 90 days of their collection. See https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=186325668085084.

Bret Taylor CTO, Facebook

sneak• 15 years ago

What happens within that 90 days? Why not anonymize it within 90 seconds?

sp332• 15 years ago

Actually, doesn't the JS in the (official) embed code send that data to Facebook even if you don't click the button? source: http://sharemenot.cs.washington.edu/Overview.html

Perceval• 15 years ago

Why is Schleswig-Holstein always causing Europe problems? Shouldn't they have learned their lesson? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schleswig-Holstein_Question

tomjen3• 15 years ago

The lesson no longer applies. After two world wars, europe has no stomach left for more.

hussong• 15 years ago

Jeff Jarvis went ahead and talked to Facebook to get some background on the issue: http://www.buzzmachine.com/2011/08/19/disliking-like-in-germ...

bugsy• 15 years ago

It's not a Like button, it's a privacy invading web tracker in the guise of a Like button, a disguise intended to colonize by trickery.

Germany's actions are the right thing to do.

notahacker• 15 years ago

Worse than Google Analytics, ad networks loading graphics on remote sites, tracking cookies, or any other form of remote tracking system that's been around since the emergence of the commercial web and arguably is part of its design?

mtogo• 15 years ago

If you're worried about this kind of tracking, install the Ghostery addon for Firefox, Safari, or Opera. It blocks like buttons, +1 buttons, google analytics, kissmetrics, and a few hundred other trackers.

Germany vs. Facebook: Like Button Declared Illegal, Sites Threatened With Fine

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