Mozilla: "We’re taking a break from Facebook"
Paul Boddie
paul at boddie.org.uk
Mon Oct 4 17:33:23 UTC 2021
On Friday, 24 September 2021 08:17:04 CEST Nico Rikken wrote:
> Interesting remarks and helpful to the discussion. Happy to hear that
> the Norwegian Data Protection Authority came to that decision.
They aren't the only ones:
"Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board leaves Facebook"
https://www.bioteknologiradet.no/2021/10/bioteknologiradet-forlater-facebook/
Again, the motivation is that since they cannot assess how Facebook uses the
data gathered about users by the platform, they cannot assess compliance with
GDPR and other regulations, and yet a public institution with a presence on
Facebook has a degree of responsibility for the data processing that is taking
place. Purely to minimise user exposure to this kind of surveillance, the
conclusion is that the only credible action is to leave Facebook.
[FSFE's recommendations]
> Apart from our press releases we regularly publish important news about
> our work and our campaigns. To ensure you receive them, you can
> subscribe to our newsletter: https://fsfe.org/news/newsletter
This is indeed the alternative now chosen by the public institution featured
above. Of course, people will whine about such outcomes and tell everyone how
e-mail is "dated" - I read another filler article along those lines only
yesterday in a major news outlet - but e-mail seems to survive nevertheless.
I actually think that a campaign to make secure e-mail more usable, including
the adoption of concrete technological measures, would be helpful. There is
the FSF's e-mail self-defence guide, but a lot of the problems with mail,
particularly when interacting with institutions, is that those institutions
are not motivated to secure their communications. So, grassroots adoption of
such technologies is neither sufficient, nor is it sufficiently persuasive for
either institutions or wider society to change their habits.
Paul
More information about the Discussion
mailing list