NDP MPs call for Digital Bill of Rights in response to Facebook data breach

From Mr. Magoo:

There's a campaign promise to get behind:  "If elected, we'll BLOCK Facebook for you.  You're welcome!"

Undoubtedly that would have a great appeal to the millenial voter. Of course some of the oldsters might be a little upset, but what do they know?

Mr. Magoo wrote:

Like the always popular bike helmet laws and seatbelt laws, it would be for our own good.

Well, I don't know if your characterization of those laws is meant to be sarcastic, but the seat-belt laws and helmet-laws are, I would say, fairly popular, or at least, totally non-controversial. Even in Alberta, the last-ditch holdout on seatbelts(I think), I don't think many people complain about them anymore.

Overall, though, I would agree that promising to block Facebook would be a MAJOR non-starter for any political party. To say that only non-millenials like it is to skirt over just how much a part of its users lives it really is. I've never done Facebook myself, and probably never will, but I don't get the impression that, for its users, having it blocked would be like having your favorite cute-cat website blocked; more like having your e-mail account blocked, or your cell-phone turned off.

I don't know everything about how all this political opinion-mining worked, but I'm wondering how different it is from the old days, when you would naively enter your name in a contest to win a Hawaiian getaway at the truck-and-trailer show, and then six months later, you're getting phone calls from pollsters asking "What do you think about the fact that the federal MP for Burnaby has recently announced that he is a homosexual?"  

Well, I wasn't so much thinking of organized resistance to them so much as people just flouting them.

Really? I only ride in cars in Canada a few times a year, but my impression is that the overwhelming majority of people use seatbelts. Same in Korea, as far as the front seat goes, not sure about the back.

I'd split the difference and say more like having your favourite porn site blocked.  Sure, you might have liked it, but it's harmful and bad so it has to go.

I'm not sure what your point is here. You're criticizing the mentality of the people who might want to ban Facebook(ie. they are like the busybodies who wanted to ban porn)? They probably are like that, but my comparison with e-mail and cell-phones was meant to illustrate the effect of a ban on users(who are also voters). I think a lot of peoples' lives would be tossed into serious tumult if an outright ban on Facebook were implemented, and it would be a surefire vote-loser for anyone who proposed the idea.  

e-mail replaced paper mail, and cell-phones replaced land lines.  Facebook replaced actually talking to people in the same room.

Is this meant as criticism? 'Cuz you could say the same thing about Web 1.0 forums like babble, ie. they allow you to talk to people outside of your immediate physical space. Personally, I prefer the old-school sites, partly because, from what I've seen, they allow for greater depth of discussion than what you get on Facebook, and also because, based on what I've been told by Facebook users themselves, privacy does seem to be a major issue there. But I recognize that there are a LOT of people who don't follow me on that.   

 

 

 

Mr. Magoo wrote:

I'd split the difference and say more like having your favourite porn site blocked.  Sure, you might have liked it, but it's harmful and bad so it has to go. [/quote]

 

Oh Mr Magoo. You put me in an uncomfortable situation by defending porn sites. They are not harmful at all to adults and if watching any and every sex act ever filmed floats your boat,I'm not standing in your way.

In fact according to some sexologists,watching porn and masturbation is part of a healthy sex life. It's a bit of a bad analogy. Drunk driving,not wearing a seatbelt,firing off ash cans in your hand...these are all harmful and bad and must go. Wanking off isn't.

And if the NDP (providing them making a gov't,something that isn't happening anytime soon) were to block ISP's from logging on to Facebook is a terrible idea that would go over like a lead balloon.

The seven key elements of a digital policy to protect Canadians

1. Protect the privacy of social media users.
2. Change anti-trust and competition laws, especially to curb the duopoly of Facebook and Google.
3. Start taxing data/platform companies and make them levy sales taxes on their transactions.
4. Explore ways to make these high-tech giants pay users for the use of their information.
5. Make Netflix play by the same rules as other broadcasters. Have the CRTC regulate it.
6. Get guarantees against fake news, on pain of huge fines.
7. Control hate, as does Germany.

There's more discussion at the link; I just listed the seven elements.  I'm not sure they're so much a "digital bill of rights" as just "some ideas that could raise money and take big scary companies down a notch or two".

I'd love to know, though, how we're supposed to "fix" the "duopoly" of Facebook and Google.  Perhaps we can tell Canadians that if their SIN ends in an odd number, they can continue to use FB and Google, but if it ends in an even number they must switch to Diaspora and Duck Duck Go.  As I've already suggested, the popularity of those two sites has everything to do with the fact that they have the most users (i.e. people's friends and such) or the most search records, respectively.  We literally don't WANT either of them to stop growing, or their value to us diminishes.

#4 is also kind of funny.  babble may not be a "tech giant", but if, on principle, people should be monetarily rewarded for providing the content for a site, then I'm going to ask babble to please make my cheque out to "cash".  Surely if posting that "I'm feeling verklempt" on FB is worth a penny, so is this post, right?

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I guess I would be willing to accept FB if it was possible for a user to delete all the data collected about them when they chose to leave FB. The problem isn't just that it hoovers up data, but that deleting that data from the system is difficult, if not impossible. That should change.

Well, I'm one of those people who doesn't believe that if you flounce from babble, you have some specific right to have every contribution you've ever made here deleted.

There is, of course, one super-easy way to control what data FB has about you...

 

 

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Personally I thought a lot of this was already covered under existing human rights legislation. If people are doing these terrible discriminatory things why isn't anyone *gasp* using the Charter to stop them?

That data would only include the fact that someone on FB called me.

If someone writes a letter to the editor of their local newspaper and says "I sent Mr. Magoo a letter explaining my concerns", I guess everyone knows that that person and I shared a correspondence, whether I like that or not.

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As to Babble; personally I would make a differentiation between those who use the data for commercial purposes and those who don't. That may not be workable, but is a consideration, in my opinion.

Are you referring to this:

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babble may not be a "tech giant", but if, on principle, people should be monetarily rewarded for providing the content for a site, then I'm going to ask babble to please make my cheque out to "cash".  Surely if posting that "I'm feeling verklempt" on FB is worth a penny, so is this post, right?

Either my participation here makes rabble/babble financially viable, or rabble/babble is hosting this site out of the goodness of their heart.

I'm not really expecting money for this post, or any of my thousands of others.  My point was I don't know why any FB user should expect a share of the loot for posting three emojis, either.  I'm not using babble for rabble's benefit.  FB users aren't using FB for FB's benefit.  It's, at best, a pleasant symbiosis.