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]

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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




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