Social Media | Steve Woods

Another data protection fine for Meta

20/01/2023 Steve WoodsPrivacy, Social Media, Tech

After a record fine of €390 mn. at the start of January, the Irish Data Protection Commission is imposing a further fine of €5.5 mn. on Meta, this time for WhatsApp’s policy with regard to personal data under the GDPR, Le Monde Informatique reports.

Has been welcoming (in tax terms) to American IT companies, but is proving to be as very sensitive area for implementation of the GDPR. Meta has just experienced this once again with a fine of €5,5 mn. imposed by Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner. This is the social network’s second fine in less than a month; on 4 January the same commission announced a record fine of €390 mn. on the personal data processing policy of Facebook and Instagram (posts passim).

In this instance it’s WhatsApp’s policy that is being censured following a complaint filed on 25 May 2018 – the date the GDPR entered into effect – by a German user. After this date the messaging service updated its general conditions of use and informed its users they had to click on “accept and continue” to indicate their consent. If they did not reply, they no longer had access to the service.As in the decision of 4th January, WhatsApp regards its data processing policy must be considered like a “contract” according to the GDPR (Article 6.1) concluded between the company and the user.

EDPB lays it on thick

The Irish Data Protection Commission investigated and drew up a draft decision which was submitted to the European regulators parties involved in this case. It proposed not imposing additional financial penalties. WhatsApp had already been fined €225 mn. in September 2021 for similar actions. However, the DPC pleaded for recognition of the contractual and thus legal nature of WhatsApp’s personal data policy – a position which caused an outcry from other data protection regulators.

The DPC approached the EDPB for a decision. It dismissed the legal basis of the contract and added an additional infringement of the transparency obligation. As a consequence, the Irish DPC is adding €5.5 mn. to the fine imposed on Meta, WhatsApp’s parent company.
GDPR"> Meta falls foul of GDPR

06/01/2023 Steve WoodsPrivacy, Social Media, Tech

Le Monde Informatique reports that Meta, the conglomerate that owns both Facebook and Instagram, has been fined a total of €390 for breaches of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in respect of both platforms’ personal data processing policy.

It has been a bad start to the year for Meta which has just been notified of a fine of €390 mn. by the Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC). The regulator is penalising the actions of Meta’s 2 subsidiaries, Facebook to the tune of €210 mn. and Instagram €180 mn. This decision concludes a case which started on 25 May 2018 (the date the GDPR entered into effect after 2 complaints had been filed – one by well-known Austrian privacy campaigner Max Schrems and the other by a Belgian citizen.

In this case Meta Ireland changed its general terms and conditions before the date of entry into effect of the GDPR, in particular “the legal basis on which it relied to legitimise its processing of users’ personal data (including behavioural advertising)”. To adopt this new policy, existing and recent Facebook and Instagram users were asked to click on the “I Accept” button on pain of no longer being able to access the platforms’ services. The questions then arose as to whether users had been forced to give their consent and if the “contract” concluded between Meta and its users conformed to Article 6 of the GDPR.

A fine increased by the EDPB

The debate was long and heated, including at European regulator level. As a matter of fact, the Irish DPC’s analysis did not meet with agreement from other European data protection authorities. For example, it considered the aspect of “forced consent” could not be upheld. Many authorities likewise thought the original Irish financial penalties too lenient. The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) was contacted to settle the matter and gave its decision on 5th December. It judged that “Meta Ireland was not entitled to invoke the legal basis of the “contract” as a legal based for its personal data processing for behavioural advertising purposes”.

It also demanded the fines proposed by the Irish regulator be raised. This is the second fine imposed on Meta in recent months by the CPD. Last November the American company was fined €275 mn. for so-called data scraping. In both cases, Meta still has the possibility of challenging the regulator’s decisions before the European judicial authorities.

Facebook and Instagram have now been given three months to bring their terms and conditions into line with the GDPR.
Fools and social media

21/12/2022 Steve WoodsMedia, Politics, Social Media, Tech

Your ‘umble scribe has not bothered with social media since the obscenely wealthy and undertaxed man baby masquerading under the name Elon Musk took the helm of Twitter and promptly set about trashing it with his control freak approach to company management, sacking lots of the tech staff that keep the platform running and demanding those that survive show their dedication to the company by working excessive hours.

This was a big wrench for your correspondent, as time not spent working was generally filled with social media discussion and debate, and so entailed a wholesale change in his daily activities (Note to self: must get round to getting on Mastodon some time soon. Ed.).

Following his acquisition of the platform, Musk installed himself as Twitter’s CEO and now seems to have reached the conclusion his rather doubtful skills are up to the job.

In recent days Musk held a Twitter poll to ask Twitter users whether he should remain as the platform’s boss. The results were not flattering if Musk has – as I suspect – a narcissistic streak.

On your bike, laddie!

Musk has now confirmed he will indeed step down as CEO as soon as he can find someone ‘foolish enough‘ to replace him.

One candidate springs to my mind immediately: an egomaniac with current experience of running a social media platform (albeit one misnamed Truth Social. Ed.). Step forward one Donald John Trump, disgraced 45th president of the United States, who spends a large share of his time playing golf (as he did whilst supposed to be occupying the Oval Office. Ed.).

I do hope these two prime examples of the Dunning-Kruger effect play nicely with one another. 😀

PS: The Register is also joining in the fun with its own poll.
Non-essential reading

25/10/2022 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media

The corpse of the political career of one Mary Elizabeth Truss, briefly the English Empire’s shortest serving prime minister is scarcely cold and the vultures of the fourth estate have already surrounded the corpse and are tucking in heartily with the aim of depriving the gullible each to part with the sum of twenty of your English pounds; or so they would like to think.

Harper Collins have somehow engaged Messrs Harry Cole and James Heale to draft her political biography.

That’s £19.99 too much.

Cole’s Wikipedia page describes him as (journalist). Note the brackets; they are most important. Cole works for The S*n, so therefore cannot be a proper journalist. At this point, your ‘umble scribe is reminded of the wise words of John McDonnell MP, former shadow chancellor, as reported by Adam Bienkov of Byline Times.

James Heale is political editor of The Spectator, reputed to be the world’s oldest surviving weekly magazine. It also acts as a cheerleader for the Conservative Party.

Your correspondent is wondering if, given the pedigree of the authors and their role to date as stenographers to the Blue Team, the original draft has been/is being written in crayon.

Update 07/11/2022: The book is now out and Andrew Anothony in The Guardian has characterised it as “a 300-leaved lettuce that was past its sell-by date before it reached the shelves“.
The living dead

13/08/2022 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media

While the interminable Conservative Party leadership contest between the 2 tenth-rate rivals, one Mary Elizabeth Truss and rich boy Rishi Sunak, draws tediously on, with government administration seeming to have almost ceased despite drought, rampant inflation, surging energy prices (with the promise of higher prices to come. Ed.) and the outgoing party-time alleged prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is hardly anywhere to be seen, not even for a photo opportunity as he dives into the dressing-up box to indulge his inner Mr Benn, a new phrase has been coined – zombie government.

A still from the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead

As Wikipedia states: “A zombie (Haitian French: zombi, Haitian Creole: zonbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse.” The English word zombie was first recorded in 1819, in a history of Brazil by the romantic poet Robert Southey, in the form of zombi. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the word’s origin as West African and compares it to the Kongo words nzambi (god) and zumbi or nzumbi (fetish).

Comparing Conservative Party ministers to reanimated corpses is disingenuous, as the latter have far more compassion.

All the crises mentioned in the first paragraph all seem to be coming to a head and combining during what is traditionally known in Britain as the silly season, which occurs during the long parliamentary summer recess, when, having no – or very little – politics to report, the newspapers and other media resort to more frivolous and lightweight items of ‘news‘.
However, all is not yet lost.

Yesterday the Metro reported that the notoriously work-shy Johnson (remember those missed COBRA meetings at the start of the pandemic? Ed.) had actually managed to turn up for a meeting, although the outcomes of the meeting stated to accompany the headline hardly seem to have made the gathering worth the effort of organising and attending.

And to think all this will continue until after the closure of the leadership poll for the 160,000 or so Tory Party members at 5pm on Friday 2nd September…
Minister’s extended stay in Homophone Corner

26/07/2022 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media

Last night saw a televised debate for the Conservative Party leadership between one Mary Elizabeth Truss and Rishi Sunak.

This encounter was described as ‘acrimonious‘ by The Guardian, whilst the BBC characterised it as the two candidates’ ‘fiercest clash yet‘.

Needless to say the cheerleaders for both contenders were out in force on social media, attempting to boost the image of their favourite candidate.

These included one Nadine Vanessa Dorries, inexplicably elevated way beyond her competence to Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport by one Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, who has relinquished the office of leader of the CONservative Party, but remains the party-time alleged prime minister of the English Empire (which some still call the United Kingdom. Ed.).

Anyway, at some point in the proceedings Nadine took to TWitter and posted the following.

Yes. gentle reader, you read that correctly: ‘loosing‘ instead of ‘losing‘.

Off you go to Homophone Corner for a nice long sit down until you learn the error of your ways, Nadine!

However, Nadine is not known for ever doing things by halves (ask the ostrich whose anus she ate. Ed.) and in response to being corrected (‘It’s ‘losing”. Ed.) by columnist Sarah Vine, the separated and soon to be divorced wife of Nadine’s Cabinet companion Michael Gove, responded by retweeting Ms Vine with no style at all and another howling homophone, as shown below.

An author? What has the English-speaking world done wrong to deserve such punishment?!

Nadine’s efforts to date have kindly described as ‘full of Irish clichés‘.

Your ‘umble scribe recommends that the fragrant Nadine refrains from inflicting further clichés – Irish or other – upon the reading public until she learns to write to a standard demanding a pen instead of a crayon. 😀
Counting to three

21/07/2022 Steve WoodsMedia, Politics, Social Media

According to Wikipedia, Tatler is a British magazine published by Condé Nast Publications which is targeted towards the British upper-middle class and upper class and those interested in society events. The topics it covers include fashion and lifestyle, plus high society and politics.

Its coverage of politics cannot be said to be well researched if the following from its Twitter account is to be taken at face value.

Second-ever female PM, Tatler?

Try counting again; and this time engage your brain!

If the Tatler’s staff can’t even count to three, it has to be wondered how accurate the rest its coverage of politics actually is.
The tweet has since been deleted.
Dorries goes to war – again and again and…

24/06/2022 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media, Tech

In the beginning was World War One (1914-18), then World War 2 (1939-45).

There have been various conflicts since 1945, but none has qualified being counted as a World War (note capitalisation) and their number has remained stuck firmly on two.

Until today.

Step forward one Nadine Vanessa Dorries, inexplicably elevated way beyond her subterranean ignorance threshold to serve as Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, concerning whose appointment former Tory Party chairman Chris Patten is on record as saying: “And nobody should ever see the words ‘Nadine Dorries’ and ‘culture secretary’ in the same sentence”.

Following yesterday’s humiliating by-election defeats in Tiverton & Honiton and Wakefield, Nadine fearlessly took to social media as cheerleader in chief for the Cult of the Boris, tweeting the following.

World War 11?

That’s nine more than are acknowledged by the generally accepted historical record.

Whether Nadine was tweeting under the influence of digital dyslexia, innumeracy or something psychoactive has yet to come to light, but remember that part of Nadine’s brief is matters digital and the above tweet shows she cannot even use a mobile phone app – an iPhone Twitter client – competently, which bodes ill for this country.
Good riddance, Internet Explorer

17/06/2022 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Social Media, Tech

Two days ago (and not before time. Ed.) Microsoft ended support for Internet Explorer (IE) 11, the final version release of its web browser first introduced in 1994.

Over the years, Microsoft has been steering Windows users away from IE and towards Edge, its newer browser which is based upon the free and open source Chromium browser.

However, for those that still use sites and or pages that exploit the standards-ignoring qualities of IE, Edge does have an IE compatibility mode.

IE’s inability to adhere to standards had in the past created lots of extra work for web developers who had to code work-arounds for IE just to get their pages to work in what was then the world’s most popular browser. It was the world’s largest browser mainly due to Microsoft bundling IE with its Windows operating system and integrating it deeply into the structure of the OS. This led to lots of angry comments in the code of webpages and style sheets, frequently employing intemperate language.

Media – and social media – reactions to and reports of the news have been mixed. Business Matters on the BBC World Service got all misty-eyed and nostalgic earlier in the week. However, my favourite response to date is from the Twitter user known as beConjuror, drawing attention to the ‘not responding‘ feature of many of Microsoft’s fine products.
Unemployable

09/06/2022 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media

Party-time alleged prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson survived a vote of confidence on Monday and is clinging to office despite 40% of his party colleagues voting against him, a higher proportion than previous no-confidence votes against former Tory premiers Margaret Thatcher (of sainted memory. Ed.) and Theresa May.

Since then Johnson and his supine cabinet have tried to appear competent with a flurry of policy announcements of the expired feline variety, including a ludicrous extension of the disastrous right to buy scheme to housing association tenants, including those on benefits.

Among those also spinning pointlessly – unlike a child’s top – is Penny Mordaunt, MP for Minister of State for Trade Policy, who tweeted a link to a piece (complete with a photograph of Rabid Dog [posts passim]. Ed.) she’d written for the Telegraph, house magazine of the Cult of the Adoration of the Boris and favoured reading matter of the Blue Team.

However, Mordaunt’s use of social media did not develop necessarily to her advantage, that of fellow members of the government of none of the talents or that of the party-time alleged prime minister, as the following exchange shows.

Yes, you read that correctly. One of the country’s leading fast food suppliers would not trust any current government minister to deliver their products, not exactly either a highly skilled or highly paid job.

Now that’s what your ‘umble scribe would call a proper vote of no confidence.

EDPB lays it on thick

A fine increased by the EDPB

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