The judge assessed that the prosecutor failed to prove that he had suffered real economic damage for tracking through the "cookie" and the "like" button.
The fact that Facebook is tracking users when they are not logged in to this social network, and even those who never had an account on it, but only looked at some of the open pages, was discovered six years ago. Now an American district court has made sure that this activity is allowed and legal, as it has rejected a lawsuit toward the founder Mark Zakerberg who was accused of unlawful monitoring of users.
A group of NGOs and activists argued in a lawsuit that Facebook is violating US privacy laws, "eavesdropping" by using the so-called "cookies" and through the "like" button to closely monitor online users' activities. However, a San Jose judge Edward Davila in California estimated that the prosecutor failed to prove that he had suffered any real economic damage or loss, or that Facebook had unlawfully intercepted the user's internet communications. The court also considers that the prosecutor should toke steps to ensure that his Internet surfing is kept private, for example in setting preferences or blocking cookies, which he did not do.
Facebook representatives said that they are “pleased” with the federal court’s ruling.
The first to discover that the most popular social network is watching users, even when not logged, was a Serb named Nik Čubrilović, an Australian former hacker and leading internet security blogger. The US company immediately claimed that "cookies" serve as a measure for security and that the collected information was not sold to advertisers. However, in 2014, Facebook began to use the information collected for so-called targeted advertising, so users were served commercials for products they had previously watched on the Internet. To respond to criticism, a Silicon Valley company has introduced the ability to adjust this form of advertising off.
In Belgium, Facebook has also been in court for unlawful monitoring of Internet users. Following an order by the local privacy commission to stop this activity, the second instance court considered that the commission could not be responsible for the Facebook business in Europe, but that the social network only complies with the decisions of the institutions in Ireland where their European headquarters are registered.
Cookies are files on a computer or telephone, through which sites collect information about visited sites. They serve sites to "remember" user activities and settings and use them automatically on his next visit to that site. For example, in the case of online shopping, the site uses the "cookie" to remember the content of the order of the user. They can also be used for storing passwords (the site has remembered the password and does not need to be re-entered at the next sign-in), as well as to remember the information entered when filling in an online form.
With Facebook (or as Jeff Berwick likes to call it: Fascistbook) recently reaching 2 billion users, the question imposes? Is this social network the biggest NSA surveillance project ever? If someone said to you: you have to report to me on the daily bases on: where is you location, how are you feeling, what are you eating, who are you with, what are you reading/watching/listening, film yourself and take pictures of your self and send them to me, would you do it willingly? Yes you would, but only if everyone else is doing it, and you are caught in the contest of who's going to do it better. Its the battle for status that they count on really. People are provided a chance to show off their amaaazing life and compete with each other for lil attention. We are attention seeking beings, and the network is built around that.
Battle for status is always going to be present in our culture and society. I am just glad that Steemit is channeling that need in a productive way - by producing great content that can be beneficial to other people. That's why Steemit will make Facebook obsolete. Steemit will become the number one social network in the future, and I strongly believe that. Why? Because people are waking up to the fact that there is something more useful and beneficial for them. And that instinct is more powerful then the battle for status. As Buckminster Fuller would say:
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
Thank you for reading.