Europe's highest court has rejected the 'safe harbor' agreement - <AUTHOR> http://uk.businessinsider.com/european-court-of-justice-safe-harbor-ruling-2015-10 <comment><USER2> The full ruling is available here: [http://www.politico.eu/wp- content/uploads/2015/10/schrems-ju...](http://www.politico.eu/wp- content/uploads/2015/10/schrems-judgment.pdf)

These bit jumped out at me: >Furthermore, national security, public interest and law enforcement requirements of the United States prevail over the safe harbour scheme, so that United States undertakings are bound to disregard, without limitation, the protective rules laid down by that scheme where they conflict with such requirements. The United States safe harbour scheme thus enables interference, by United States public authorities, with the fundamental rights of persons, and the Commission decision does not refer either to the existence, in the United States, of rules intended to limit any such interference or to the existence of effective legal protection against the interference.

>This judgment has the consequence that the Irish supervisory authority is required to examine Mr Schrems' complaint with all due diligence and, at the conclusion of its investigation, is to decide whether, pursuant to the directive, transfer of the data of Facebook's European subscribers to the United States should be suspended on the ground that that country does not afford an adequate level of protection of personal data.

My reading (not a legal expert) is that data residency is the important bit here. Which in my view is a small step but not sufficient.

<comment><USER3> I think it means a lot more than just data residency. Without the safe harbor agreement you can no longer avoid EU privacy regulations by storing the data in the US.

This means that a lot of US companies are now exposed to EU privacy regulations where previously they only had to account for US privacy regulations.

The US privacy regulations are no longer considered compatible with the EU privacy regulations. That has much more impact than just data residency.

<comment><USER4> What I am curious about is how do we define "doing business in the EU"? If I am american, create a blog stored in the US, and allow users to register an account to comment on the blog, am I doing business in the EU if a EU person creates an account or are my visitors more akin to foreign tourists visiting a US shop in the US and therefore outside the reach of EU regulation?

In the financial sector, the extra-territoriality of US laws has been a problem for decades. Securities issued in the EU, by EU entities and marketed to EU investors end up having some language referring to which US regulation they fall under out of fear that a US person will end up buying it, and the US applying their laws and regulations.

<comment><USER5> > _In the financial sector, the extra-territoriality of US laws has been a > problem for decades._

This is a problem for the internet that has long been present but is increasing: _multiple_ jurisdictions with global reach. Historically the First Amendment has shielded the internet from a lot of attempts to interfere with it, but there's no particular reason why only the US should claim that its laws apply globally. Why not Franco-German laws against Holocaust denial? English libel law? Saudi blasphemy law? Chinese censorship law?

Sooner or later someone's going to find themselves in a Kafkaesque situation where two global jurisdictions demand incompatible things.

<comment><USER6> > Sooner or later someone's going to find themselves in a Kafkaesque situation > where two global jurisdictions demand incompatible things.

That's exactly what we're already talking about here: companies are unable to obey both EU rules concerning privacy, and US laws concerning law enforcement access to data.

And that's basically why borders between internet jurisdictions are now being drawn up.

<comment><USER5> The sad thing is that Europe also has laws enabling law enforcement access to data, including (until recently) mandatory retention of certain data by ISPs. All this is about is mass surveillance without due process. All that would be required to fix it is interpreting the Fourth Amendment in the same way as Article 8, and abolishing the whole secret court infrastructure.

> The Court adds that legislation permitting the public authorities to have > access on a generalised basis to the content of electronic communications > must be regarded as compromising the essence of the fundamental right to > respect for private life.

> Likewise, the Court observes that legislation not providing for any > possibility for an individual to pursue legal remedies in order to have > access to personal data relating to him, or to obtain the rectification or > erasure of such data, compromises the essence of the fundamental right to > effective judicial protection, the existence of such a possibility being > inherent in the existence of the rule of law.

<comment><USER7> Actually, data retention was declared illegal several times. No government can force you to do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Meanwhile, TPP prohibits countries from having data sovereignty laws, [http://www.zdnet.com/article/tpp-moves-toward-killing-off- go...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/tpp-moves-toward-killing-off-government- mandated-data-sovereignty/), with similar prohibitions sought in TTIP and TISA, [https://blog.ffii.org/a-license-to-spy-cross-border-data- flo...](https://blog.ffii.org/a-license-to-spy-cross-border-data-flows-in- ttip/)

 _" Governments in Australia, the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Brunei, and Chile will be unable to force companies from those countries to store government data in local datacentres ... governments will not only be prevented from mandating data sovereignty provision, they will also be unable to demand access to source code from companies incorporated in TPP territories."_

<comment><USER9> Maybe I'm reaching a bit too far, but we're mainly discussing this in the context of non-US resident's data being transferred to the US, without their say so, where the NSA then does whatever it likes with it. But surely this treaty goes both ways? Doesn't it also allow US citizen's data to be transferred to Vietnam etc, without the person's permission, under their legal framework and their government and commercial agencies get to do what they like with it according to their laws? And the US government is ok with that?

Unless I'm missing something, the US government (and NZ, and Australian, etc) just completely sold out their citizen's privacy to a whole bunch foreign nations including a communist dictatorship. Wow.

<comment><USER10> I don't think so. What it is saying is that if a Vietnam-based cloud company sets up shop, the US cannot mandate that it keep US customer data on US servers. I can see why the US wants this: They want everyone's data in the US. What I cannot see is why anyone else would agree to this.

My _guess_ is that what it really means is that such companies are allowed to operate. OK, fine. But no one is forced to use them. So the US might say "Nice service, Vietnam. But we won't buy it unless you put servers in the US." They aren't forcing anyone to do anything.

<comment><USER5> _no one is forced to use them_

The end user doesn't get a choice. The US has no general data protection law. Customer loyalty cards, credit records, ad tracking data: all of these may already be kept overseas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is good, and a direct result of the Snowden revelations - without those, the US would still considered to be a safe harbor for your data. I'm hopeful that this will create the kick that the US needed, now that actual income (and high income, at that) is becoming threatened by the NSA. Of course this isn't the end to their data theft. They're likely to get the data from their Five Eyes European friends instead, but still - a good victory.

Amazing to see what one determined person can do!

<comment><USER12> Sure. The next step would be to demand EU nations which violate the safe harbor EU rules be either thrown out of the EU (GB, but probably also Neitherlands, Sweden and Denmark), or fix their privacy laws. It cannot be that the GHCQ acts on behalf of the US on EU data and allows easy circumvention of basic privacy principles.

<comment><USER5> Sadly, the data protection laws have always had "national security" exemptions.

<comment><USER13> Which is funny since US "national security" is what prompted the ECJ to invalidate the safe harbor provision.

<comment><USER14> Obviously, data protection laws don't have exceptions for other countries' national security.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Its been asked by multiple people in the thread, but I'm not clear on the answer.

If I host a website that has user accounts in the US, and do not stop people from the EU from registering, do I, with no offices outside the US, need to do something different because of this ruling?

<comment><USER16> This only applies if you have EU users submitting data to EU servers and then you want to move that data to another jurisdiction, namely the US.

If your user is submitting their own personal information to servers outside the EU, that's their lookout. That's what seems to apply to you. Carry on. Nothing to see here.

But if they're submitting to one of your nodes within the EU, they can consider that the data will continue to benefit from the protections being in the EU affords it. Moving it to the US without their permission does not abide the EU protections.

<comment><USER17> That's not what my lawyer says. Our servers are only in the US and we were instructed that if we were to accept European customers we needed to go through the Safe Harbor process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Edit: I'm reacting to "Facebook and Twitter [...] could be forced to host European user data in Europe"

Border control with data is the worst idea ever.

Think of it: my Facebook friends lists has EU and US people in it. This list can't reside in EU or US. This webpage can't be served by either a EU or US web-server. By law. LOL

Plus I'm a EU citizen, and I can choose to give my data to whoever I want... no more. That's sad.

This ruling only shows the dismal tech knowledge of lawyers and lawmakers. It's impossible to implement Facebook with data spread between EU and US. Same for Tweeter and others. Say goodbye to social networks. Because of model denormalization, because of network latency and intercontinental bandwidth.

Some mention cloud zones, but they're only useful with replication, which IS data transfer.

OR... social networks will cheat. And one day, they'll be sued for cheating the impossible regulations (think VW...)

<comment><USER9> > Think of it: my Facebook friends lists has EU and US people in it. This list > can't reside in EU or US.

I think you're misunderstanding the ownership of the data, hence the down votes. If I as an EU citizen create a private friends list like this, that list belongs to me. If I live in the EU but create the list using a US service with servers in the US, there is no problem. US privacy laws apply. If I create the list using an EU service on EU hosted servers there is no problem, EU privacy laws apply. However in this second case if the internet service company wants to transfer the list from their EU servers to their US servers without my explicit permission, that's a problem.

<comment><USER18> Imagine I'm in the EU, and Facebook wants to store my data in the EU. But I'm friend with US people. So I'm in their own friend list too, which is stored in the USA. So my data is needed in the USA too.

When I publish something in Europe, my friends needs to see it too in the USA. And you can't build a Facebook wall with intercontinental latencies. You need replication.

It's a social graph, and you can't split it between US and EU: data has to be replicated across borders (or face massive latency and bandwidth).

<comment><USER19> > And you can't build a Facebook wall with intercontinental latencies.

I have yet to see a Facebook wall in under 0.133 seconds, I'm not sure intercontinental latencies are the biggest problem in web performance these days...

<comment><USER20> The latency would be incurred several times when loading a single wall. As an experiment, take a moderately complex web app and deploy it in a different continent from the database it connects to.

<comment><USER19> If you're at the point of storing data on different continents and being aware where it is stored, I'm not sure what is stopping you from batching your trans-continent queries so that you only hit the trans-continent latency once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> European citizen here, and as much as i welcome a step like this, it's also pretty interesting to see, what this means for smaller (online) businesses outside of europe.

Sure, you want to host customer data from europe in europe (latency-wise) anyways, but now that this will be more or less required it will be interesting to see how people will solve this. The good thing is, with "the cloud" you have a lot of option (locations) to choose from.

<comment><USER22> Yeah good luck setting up a startup now. If other countries follow Russia's suit, we'll soon end up having to somehow determine where a user is from (what if they're roaming, etc.?) so we can shard the datastore across multiple geographic locations. So obviously this = increased costs & complexity which will slow the speed of iteration :-(

<comment><USER23> The easiness of setting up a startup should not be held in higher regard than people's right to privacy.

<comment><USER24> I'm as much for generating friction as anyone else. But I wouldn't pretend that keeping data in any country in NATO isn't akin to giving it to five eyes.

Basically the EU is creating a PR stunt that in theory could force them to enact some minimum veneer of standards and that PR stunt is going to have higher short term costs for the small private sector players than the large ones.

It is entirely possible the stunt will instead pay off for the other EU governments and against the privacy of their population by getting them invited further into the club.

<comment><USER25> A ruling from the higher court of the EU is a PR stunt?

<comment><USER24> Germany thought the antennas on their land were just for astronomy?

<comment><USER25> What has to do some antennas in Germany with a ruling from the ECJ of a case referred by the Irish High Court about Facebook?

Are you saying that the ECJ ruled without looking at the case merits?

<comment><USER24> I'm saying that no material facts have changed or were unknown by the governments before the safe haven and that I am skeptical that the case would have been heard at all without public revelation and interest.

I am also very skeptical that private data in Germany was or is any safer from the problems with the safe haven as far as data intentionally illegally shared with institutions in the US, not due purely to issues on the ground when defending the data in good faith.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's interesting how this is described as a potential "bureaucratic nightmare". Having to follow the law of the country your doing business in has been standard operating procedure for, well, basically all of human history.

Somehow the tech industry seems to think it should be exempt from that, even if it means being allowed to piss all over the basic civil rights of citizens of modern Western democracies.

Yes, this is a problem that needs to be solved given the reality modern cross- border online services. But it can't be solved by the corrupt political elite simply selling their citizens hard fought rights to corporations operating from countries that lack respect for such rights.

<comment><USER27> What sucks about it is that the EU, rather than presenting one set of rules and regulations to follow, and, say, allowing you to host data within the EU to be compliant, seems to have kicked the question down to individual European countries, each of which might do something different.

And you wonder why it's tougher to do startups in Europe...

I'm pleased by what the ruling says about the NSA and the pressure it puts on the need for reform, but less than pleased about the practical implications.

<comment><USER28> Well the data protection principles are common across the EU - so there's only limited scope for national DPAs to disagree and there's always the opportunity to ask the ECJ for a ruling to clarify.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Does this effectively render any Parse or Firebase application (they only have US servers) that stores user information (e.g. email account) illegal in the EU?

<comment><USER7> _I am not a lawyer, so do not take this as legal advice, please consult a lawyer if you want actual advice._

This said: Probably yes. EU data laws are mostly about private information, for example private chat messages, etc.

If you only store email accounts, you might get around the laws, but if you store anything like payment information, communication between users, etc, you effectively now have to follow EU data laws, which mean: You can't give any third party (not even your government or hoster) access, you can't store it in countries where the government might just seize your data (like the US), etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if there are additional ramifications of this, even for European companies dealing with European customers. For example, what happens when personal data from a European datacentre to a European customer transits a US network on the way (such routing diversions are fairly common)? In the light of Snowden's revelations, this would seem incompatible with EU privacy regulations unless the data were encrypted. Of course personal data should always be encrypted, but where are the CAs located? Is a European company negligent if they don't use a European CA and do certificate pinning? Interesting times.

</comment><comment><USER31> Americans: This is time to get your government to change your laws if you still want to be the leader in the tech field.

<comment><USER32> Even if we adopted identical laws, the government would just ignore them. We're a nation of criminals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This sounds great! Though if the owning company is in the US, then the US views this as reason to be able to access customer data no matter where its stored. More fun to come mm?

Question: Why do companies HQ themselves in the US? Why not pick a friendlier country, then turn their US parts into a simple contractor that supplies software development and engineering resources? Then the US company would not have actual ownership of any data. Forcing them to reveal customer records would be the same as forcing an individual to steal data right?

<comment><USER33> [https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)

Today you get to learn about: American Exceptionalism!

It is important to realize that, within the US, there is essentially a universal belief that the US is the best place to live, work, or be in the entire world. The debate is not so much whether the universe revolves around the United States, but which city exactly the axis passes through -- New York, DC, San Francisco, LA. It is very important that a universal axis has a commonly used two letter acronym, which is why not even a Chicagoan seriously believes the axis is through Chicago.

When the EU makes privacy complaints against US companies, the common perception -- even among US citizens who disapprove of domestic spying programs -- is that _something is wrong with the EU_. The idea that the EU could be right to hold a US corporation accountable to their laws never even occurs.

No American could ever conceive of establishing the HQ of a US corporation outside the US -- except maybe as part of a skeevy tax dodge. The US is the best place in the world to live, work, and run a business. Why would you want to go anywhere else? To be fair, most of the US companies that do establish some sort of off-shore setup _are_ engaging in some sort of skeevy tax dodge.

<comment><USER10> I mean I know a lot of "common" people believe that - I've lived in the US in the past. But I thought once a lot of money was on the line, reality or cynicism would set in.

<comment><USER33> If money cured bias we'd probably live in a lot nicer world :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> off topic, but why does the article use a picture of Mark Zuckerberg with lip stick photoshopped on?

<comment><USER35> I was going to ask the same question! Is it some kind of rendering incompatibility between this jpeg and most browsers, or just a really crappy photography touch-up job?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> > The average consumer will not see any restrictions in daily use, but will > hopefully soon be able to use online services without potentially being > subject to mass surveillance

> However, US companies that obviously aided US mass surveillance (e.g. Apple, > Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo) may face serious legal consequences > from this ruling when data protection authorities of 28 member states review > their cooperation with US spy agencies.

Can't wait. This is going to be good.

[http://www.europe-v-facebook.org/CJEU_IR.pdf](http://www.europe-v- facebook.org/CJEU_IR.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER37> So this is what I think will happen: a lot of companies (maybe even the likes of facebook and google) will move out of europe and just serve everything from the US. There is not really an alternative to that, how could my EU-hosted facebook profile not be transferred to the US so my friends can see my book favourites?

<comment><USER19> Have you ever tried to do ad-selling on Google's scale without local sales offices?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Couldn't we get a better source than Business Insider?

<comment><USER38> For example: [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/06/us-digital- data...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/06/us-digital-data-storage- systems-enable-state-interference-eu-court-rules)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> So we are building a messaging product for organizations. I am wondering how this can impact us if an org that uses our product has employees in both EU and US (assuming that national regulators in EU go ahead and bar personal data transfer to US).

* Will we need to partition user data based on location, even if they are in the same organization?

* What happens when a user in EU sends a message to one in US? So right now the chat history for one-on-one conversation pairs is stored in one place, does this ruling mean that now we have to duplicate this chat history for both the users?

* Even worse, what if multiple EU and US users are part of the same chat group? Is there any way we can store the group's chat history in one place?

<comment><USER40> Sure, store it all in the EU. The US has no equivalent legislation, after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Good. Hopefully this puts pressure on the USA to rein in its out of control security state.

</comment><comment><USER42> How is it possible that people don't discuss the GCHQ in the same breath as the NSA? From news reports it seems they may as well be the same agency. Keeping data out of the US isn't enough, and it's dangerous for Europeans to think that their own governments are looking out for their privacy. They should be looking instead to make encryption ubiquitous. This may be limiting corporate data storage, but I don't think this impacts intelligence gathering for the US at all.

<comment><USER28> Well it's not _just_ about the NSA - although that is what triggered the case that this judgement is from.

Even if the NSA (and GCHQ) wasn't collecting everything, US law still wouldn't provide enough protection to comply with EU privacy norms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> My reading of the judgment is that it just throws the decision back to the national courts to decide what constitutes safe harbor. Safe Harbour agreement between US and EU streamlined the process for getting access to EU data. Now it mus be decided in national level.

[http://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/schrems- ju...](http://www.politico.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/schrems-judgment.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER44> If I'm a US company that does business in the EU, is there any reason that personal information collection can't just happen through a US web server? That way it is the user who is transferring the data to the US, not the company.

Updating your name, birthday and other personal information would take an extra 100 ms in order to POST to the US, but it could then be replicated back out to the EU for reads if necessary for performance.

<comment><USER45> Wouldn't that be the case of you're paying for a service on us soil from out with the us. Instead of providing a service in a foreign country.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Great success! They should try it the other way around. Looking for the set of things they can do that are correct in the European countries and then apply it to the US as well. If the biggest argument is to simplify ruling and management then this approach would be just as good as allowing US rules to overwrite European rules, right?

</comment><comment><USER47> It's interesting that certain bloggers such as Dustin Curtis and Ben Thompson have claimed that Apple's privacy stance will ultimately hurt them because they'll be at a disadvantage to competitors, but it seems like they've shown some real foresight when you take this ruling into consideration.

<comment><USER25> How this ruling affects differently Apple from Facebook or Google?

<comment><USER48> Apple's business isn't based on exploiting the user's data and shitting all over their users' privacy (as has been the case with Facebook in the past, and Google too to some extent), and they've taken explicit steps to safeguard their users' privacy (e.g. encryption, ad-blocking).

<comment><USER25> What has to do what you say with the ruling?

What has to do the business model with a ruling that states that user data can't be transferred?

How is different iCloud than Google Drive?

<comment><USER48> The point is that Google will have to adopt much more than Apple. Sure, iCloud and gDrive might be equivalent, but there is no Apple equivalent to e.g. G+ or G-ads.

<comment><USER49> As if there would be a difference in motivation between evil corp#1, evil corp#2 and evil corp#3. You can substitute those names with apple, google, microsoft, facebook, amazon, whatever you like. If you think for one minute that Apple is only a fraction better then their competition you're very misguided by apples great marketing.

Honestly, if you think G+ is bad, or Adwords, but the appstore is not (Or iCloud, iwatch, Siri, Amazon Echo, Whatsapp, etc.) you will need to do a reality check. All of those are very privacy intruding and every company will do it's best to make money of your data. And pretty much all of those services is _made_ to collect as much information as possible about you.

Use Apple or Google or Facebook and store your private data to be datamined and monetized but please don't fall for marketing speech and all that "don't be evil" bullshit every mega corporation is telling you.

<comment><USER48> Could you explain to me again, please, how does Apple make money from my data?

<comment><USER50> Can we agree that Apple make more money as a result of having "targeting groups" for iAds compared to if they didn't use any targeting? If so, by targeting iAds using data disclosed here: [https://support.apple.com/en- us/HT205223](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205223)

<comment><USER48> Thanks, I didn't know about that. Still, much better than the rest of them, IMO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is good for everyone's privacy. By making it difficult for businesses to centralize the storage of US and European data, the European court has incentivized businesses to pressure the US government toward laws that respect our privacy better.

</comment><comment><USER52> I wonder if some companies have sufficiently complex operations globally, that they end up with mutually incompatible laws and would have to either stop doing business in a country or split itself in two to continue to operate?

</comment><comment><USER53> While this is a win for individual privacy, it does truly make scaling web services significantly harder and more costly.

Being in compliance is fairly easy for large companies, but it's going to be a challenge for startups.

</comment><comment><USER54> Prohibition of storing behavioral data would be great next step.

<comment><USER25> Why?

<comment><USER54> Because storing and processing data that about user who is unconscious that such are even collected is de facto spying?

<comment><USER25> Can you give an example of a company storing and processing data without telling it in the service policies?

And you have said that ALL the behavioral data collection must be forbidden. Even if the user agrees with that?

By the way, spying is already illegal. If you know about that behavior you can sue those companies

<comment><USER7> Any ToS that contain "unexpected" or "surprising" clauses are automatically null and void under EU law. Even if the user agrees with them.

<comment><USER25> Perhaps the clauses are void, but what the OP said is that there is no information about data being collected.

This is what I´m asking, an example of one of those companies "spying"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Hosting data locally in EU doesn't solve privacy problem because the servers are still operated by USA companies that can (and obviously will) share the data with NSA. The solution is to create more local services so the data never leave the country. It is also better economy-wise so the money stay in the country too.

<comment><USER28> That's one thing that the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)[0] which is in the legislative pipeline at the moment is looking to fix.

The proposals include being able to levy a fine up to €1,000,000 or up to 5% of the annual worldwide turnover (whichever is _greater_ ) if they fail to comply with EU data protection rules.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regulation)

<comment><USER55> Such violation would be extremely hard to prove if the data were exported to US via secure channels.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> While this is a massive ruling, there are valid exceptions that allow companies who have agreed with their clients to transmit their data from EU to US while keeping data separation and with respect to the data protection law.

This is not a blanket-panic for all US/EU companies as the media are projecting.

<comment><USER57> The difference to Safe Harbour is that the client can revoke their consent at any time. After that the data must be pulled off US servers.

If I ask Facebook to delete my data, they are absolutely bound by this. There is no legal way anymore to just hide the data from me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> This is just small victory. AFAIK, US government can still ask without a court order Facebook or MS or any other US company to handle them the data of/for european citizens that hosted in Europe.

<comment><USER28> That's one thing that the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)[0] which is in the legislative pipeline at the moment is looking to fix.

The proposals include being able to levy a fine up to €1,000,000 or up to 5% of the annual worldwide turnover (whichever is greater) if they fail to comply with EU data protection rules.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula..).

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Perhaps it's time to p2p everything.

</comment><comment><USER60> well, I guess LinkedIn is hosed. and AWS which does global replication. and and and.

this ruling ignores the decentralized nature of the internet.

worst case is Europe being shut off from any tech advances, while the Pacific region from Cali to China takes off.

</comment><comment><USER61> I wish the title was "EU's highest court". Europe != EU.

</comment><comment><USER62> No, this is terrible.

These countries are demanding we run our services in their countries. This is a money grab.

Note that these same countries expect the United States to act as World Police, and do not contribute as much money as they should. They want the US to know about attacks ahead of time. I wonder how the US could possibly know about attacks ahead of time?

I deplore mass surveillance. I really do. But I think wiretapping with a warrant is a necessary tool for fighting crime, and terror, and bad state actors.

There's a part of me that desperately hopes all major internet services just shut off Europe entirely. Welcome back to the Stone Age.

<comment><USER63> The US finds out about attacks ahead of time the same way we always have: through intelligence operations, not data mining. I don't think anyone is saying that targeted, legal wire tapping is somehow off-limits now. I don't see how this would impact the ability of a company to assist the authorities in monitoring individuals' communications, either - it will, _possibly_ , make it more difficult for the NSA to do a blanket gathering of foreign communications, which I believe is the point.

Large service providers like Google and Amazon can and will comply with the laws. It is possible that social media start-ups will be unable to operate across borders due to regulations, but this will hardly be a staggering setback to the European populace's ability to share photos of their food. I doubt there are any real implications for things like freedom of speech/expression: these types of services are already effectively illegal in places with heavily authoritarian governments.

<comment><USER62> Congratulations. We just broke the INTERNET part of the internet.

Only large service providers will be able to comply with all of the laws. Why are we patting ourselves on the backs for this?

<comment><USER40> _Only large service providers will be able to comply with all of the laws._

Why, exactly? And what are "all of the laws"? The data protection directive is not that complicated or onerous, and besides, you can avoid it wholesale: just don't store personal data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> The Euros are jelly they did not invent profitable Big Data. So they will be putting every roadblock possible against those who did.

<comment><USER40> By retroactively passing a Directive? I'd take time travel over big data any day!

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> >That could be a bureaucratic nightmare: In theory, American companies with European customers could now end up trying to follow 20 or more different sets of national data privacy regulations.

Good. If you want to be a multinational company, then you should have to obey the laws of each country.

<comment><USER66> > Good. If you want to be a multinational company, then you should have to > obey the laws of each country

Good luck with that. If the US mandates you do X and EU mandates you do !X.

<comment><USER65> So, lets say for example that the US requires that you keep data on customers so that law enforcement can use it, but the EU requires that you _don 't_ so that privacy is protected.

Are you are suggesting that one of those laws should be changed to make it easier for multinational companies to operate, even though there was a good reason for the law in the first place? Because I would say that if the company absolutely has to keep customer data then they shouldn't operate in a country where that is illegal, and if they refuse to keep customer data then they shouldn't be operating in the country where it is required.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> This is good and I see no reason why this cannot be done easily for most corps (except the ones who mine personal data). For why would you not have critical personal data in the specific country table/database that is in that specific country. If you do not provide the service in that country and some one signs up then inform that the data is not safe and give visible warning. Is that really difficult. I used to have DB library layer earlier where based employee location it will direct their data to that location.

<comment><USER50> Are you allowed to breach these rules if you provide a visible warning?

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> The "good" companies should relocate their business central away from USA and come to Europe!

Some big companies should finally stop talking and start acting, this is the only chance for a real change.

Cut the NSA-Brotherhood ties! These little Hitlers from all the affiliated "Clubs of Distopians" and the War-Industry completely destroyed the most important association of "USA == Freedom" in the world. Face it. Deal with it. Act accordingly.

For people interested in history: it might be interesting to look at the post- ww-2 de-Nazification process in germany to understand how hard it is to remove established circles of anti-democratic bureaucrats from power structures. This will take a very long time (if it happens at all).

The better immediate reaction would be to support progressive and freedom- oriented societies with your technical powers until "good old USA" is restored. Europe is not perfect, but what happens in USA nowadays is pure distopia, a very unhealthy development that will lead to a negative outcome for all of us.

Once people came to The USA because of suppression and lack of freedom in their home countries. Just a few generations later if you have the same sense and longing for freedom like these ancestors of you, it is now time to leave that continent as the suppressors followed your trails - come home to Europe and together we can build a better future!</comment>


You Can't Solve the Gender Gap in Tech If You Don't Understand Why It Exists - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/reshmasaujani/tech-gender-gap-pipeline-myth <comment><USER2> As a woman in technology, a coder no less, I totally understand the pipeline problem. Men dominated technology in the very early days, and men made up most of the workforce. As much as society, government, and education attempt to force women into STEM fields, it's going to take a while before there are enough women, with enough experience, to truly equalize compensation. As for girls opting out of coding, that's ok.. Not all girls want to code, and not all girls want to take a STEM path, and that should not be see as some failure.

<comment><USER3> > _Not all girls want to code, and not all girls want to take a STEM path, and > that should not be see as some failure._

It's also true that not all boys want to code, and not all boys want to take a STEM path.

But what if a larger percentage of boys want to code or take a STEM path? If this were so, it would look like a pipeline problem, and it would look like a pipeline problem that's quite hard to fix. It might actually look like the reality we currently see.

But wait, it used to be that computer science was almost evenly split between men and women, right? Where did all those women go?

This is a reasonable question to ask, but it's not the only reasonable question to ask. Another question to ask would be: 50 years ago, what percentage of the overall population had computer science degrees? And is that percentage larger, smaller, or roughly similar to what it is today? I don't know, but I think it was likely much, much smaller than it is today. It might be the case that there are more female computer science graduates today as a percentage of the total population than there was 50 years ago. But how could that be true, if (as we know) men with computer science degrees now way outnumber women with computer science degrees?

This isn't really a trick question, the answer is pretty easy: Today there are a lot more people with computer science degrees. That increase was disproportionately men, and that's a consequence of a pipeline that is disproportionately men.

So what's the difference between the pipeline 50 years ago and the pipeline today?

<comment><USER4> _But what if a larger percentage of boys want to code or take a STEM path? If this were so, it would look like a pipeline problem, and it would look like a pipeline problem that 's quite hard to fix. It might actually look like the reality we currently see._

Why is that a problem? Why is it something to fix? Why do we want to achieve perfect 50% ratios on people's motivations and desires?

edit: typo

<comment><USER3> > _Why is that a problem? Why is it something to fix? Why do we want to > achieve perfect 50% ratios on people 's motivations and desires?_

I personally don't think it's a problem. The disparity in computer science is so big that it does, at least, deserve an explanation, however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I sometimes wonder if the problem isn't exactly the opposite of what people think they are. Women are underrepresented in tech because they get _more_ support, not less. More choices, and they get pushed to go for the truly glamorous choices.

What is glamorous in middle school and high school ? Well, the jobs the people "in power" at such institutions have, and in their own families. So Mom's job (the carer's job, because most families have a carer and a provider or at least have those roles be unbalanced and of course most contact will be with the carer, not the provider). The teacher's job. Caring jobs in general. And of course the "in power" jobs on TV. Men are immediately discouraged from doing that and so they skip ... what of course turns out to be mostly undesirable roles. Which make these women easily exploitable, and perhaps there ought to be some discussion of why that is such a big problem for anyone.

Maybe what needs to happen is we need to start telling women of age 10-12 "you know, in 10 years, a bit more, you'll need to support yourself, maybe a family. And as a teacher, carer job, or mom, it'll suck. You'll be low on the scale, and dependent. Think about it now and save yourself a lot of pain later".

20 years later (because that's how long it inevitably takes) we'll have a majority women, because they really do outcompete men on average given the chance. I mean, I do agree there's no way in hell this will ever happen, but one can dream.

<comment><USER6> >I sometimes wonder if the problem isn't exactly the opposite of what people think they are. Women are underrepresented in tech because they get more support, not less. More choices, and they get pushed to go for the truly glamorous choices.

This is actually an interesting point and I haven't been able to find information about it.

Lets say we have X amount of women who are going into STEM... but say for example I used to live in the Detroit area. The universities at the time I was about to head into post-secondary were offering 'scholarships' where women who took their first year in engineering, would get the rest of their education for free and most of the engineering credits would act as wildcard credits toward any other degree if they chose to switch.

So perhaps we lack women in IT because they went to engineering instead?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Stop missing the complex issues and relying on the simplified pipeline cliché" but then immediately invoke the basement-dwelling, hoodie-wearing, male neckbeard stereotype?

<comment><USER8> Yes.

Because the focus of the article is about how the gender gap/discrimination in tech issue is nuanced, and the other is literally talking about default stereotypes in tech and how they are damaging.

Literally, the article invoked a stereotype, because the overwhelmingly common stereotype is damaging.

<comment><USER7> Not sure what you're saying, but it sounds like we're kind of agreeing, maybe? It just seems pointless to urge that we quit using tired tropes to solve a problem, but then immediately invoke another trope to make your point.

Are men coding alone in their basements really the problem?

<comment><USER9> Calling out a stereotype is not invoking it.

<comment><USER10> The article claims that prospective girls see "men in hoodies coding alone in their basements" as role models. That's obviously not an accurate view of software engineering but is it really the view that teenagers have? If so, that's a real problem.

<comment><USER8> Thank you for making the point I was trying to with less words.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Girls in elementary school show equal interest and aptitude as boys when it > comes to coding

That might be true today, but it's a steaming crock of made-up bullshit if they're saying it was that way 15 years ago. You know... At the beginning of the pipeline that would have produced an even distribution today.

</comment><comment><USER12> Gender gap isn't a problem to solve. It may be a symptom of many things, such as harrassment, discouragement, discrimination, or environmental biases that make women less comfortable than men. Gender gap is smoke, go find fires the need to be put out, and solve those. Otherwise you'll slam into a wall because the "optimal" ratio does not exist and has no consensus, but specific harmful behaviors and and systems are indefensible.

<comment><USER13> I agree with you. It's frustrating when we focus on symptoms instead of the root causes, which are deeply encoded in our culture. It just makes it that much harder.

It's also frustrating when it's not discussed at all. It's hard to bring up the biases and subtle discrimination that occurs as a PoC without making a privileged person run for the hills.

I applaud people whose job is focused on bringing change to organizations. I can't imagine how difficult it is to do this work effectively.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Lots of opinions, but no data to back it up.

<comment><USER15> To be fair the original title starts with "Opinion: You Can't Solve...". But anyway, it's buzzfeed...

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> One stat I've never seen in these types of discussions are how many women are applying for tech positions vs men. If that number is low then it's probably a pipeline issue.

<comment><USER7> I think the article is trying to say that the state of the pipeline is what it is because of the way that the end of it appears to those who might be in the beginning of it. Young women aren't going to stay in the pipeline for a career that looks like they will have a hard time excelling in once they reach adulthood.

Despite my distaste for the authors invoking basement coder stereotypes, I can see their point. We can keep blaming the "pipeline" if the industry is rife with sexism and harassment. Our current state of affairs influences the pipeline.

<comment><USER16> Sexism and harassment is even more prevalent in the entertainment industry and there are plenty of women working in entertainment. Although I agree sexism/harassment exists in tech, I don't believe it's a valid argument for why there is a gender gap.

<comment><USER9> Male and female actors rarely compete for the same roles. Many other jobs in the entertainment industry are dominated by men. Orchestras used to be, but blind auditions made them more balanced. Just pointing to the entertainment industry doesn't disprove a connection between sexism and gender imbalance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Found this piece very interesting.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-computer- progra...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/when-computer-programming- was-womens-work/2011/08/24/gIQAdixGgJ_story.html)</comment>


Ask HN: How to get rid of bad politicians? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> define bad because for their district they are exactly what most of them want.</comment>


The Code Nomad Philosophy - <AUTHOR> http://gun.io/philosophy/

<comment><USER2> Hey, I wrote this! Thanks for posting this here.

I'm going to update the blog with more adventures in Code Nomadry.. I've been some crazy places. It's way, way fun.</comment>


Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-changed-search-algorithm-in-ways-that-boost-its-own-products-11568645345?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> Considering how shopping at Amazon now feels like shopping at an electronics bazaar in Singapore with giant bins of random knock-off products of suspicious quality, tweaking the algo to push name-brand options (even if it's _their own_ name-brand) would be a welcome move to me as a buyer.

Obviously it's grossly unfair to their vendors, but from a strictly user- centric view it's an improvement.

Otherwise, Amazon feels like AliExpress with faster shipping and better English.

<comment><USER3> (I can only guess you are American) - American experiences with Amazon are so different to mine over here in the UK it's incredible. I buy tonnes of different stuff from Amazon(multiple hundred orders last year) and I have never ever gotten anything counterfeit or had any issues. In fact every time when their 1-day delivery arrives late they just extend my prime by a month, no questions asked. And yet every time I go on HN it's 100% negative, stories about unreputable sellers selling fake stuff - this is just not happening outside of US for some reason.

<comment><USER4> It's likely related to

(1) US market is largest "single-language * consumer spending" market, so almost everyone outside of US/UK market puts effort in US first.

(2) USPS/UPU offers nearly 0-cost shipping for China to US. Can you ship a 2oz packet from China to the UK for under $1?

<comment><USER5> I don't know specifically about the UK, but the zero cost shipping from China isn't a US thing. It's an international agreement, and I've seen things being shipped for free from China to both Europe and the Middle East.

<comment><USER6> Woah. In this bigger picture, amazon and everybody else is doing the last mile for Fulfilled By China!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would compare this to a supermarket allocating shelf space to maximize its profits, either by placing its own brands front and center or by featuring brands that have made a deal for prime shelf placement. I don't see this as scandalous or even new.

Coincidentally, Amazon brand products are usually pretty good in my experience, so this might not be a terrible outcome for users who have already decided to come shop at Amazon's store.

<comment><USER8> Grocery stores don't operate as a "marketplace" though. Grocery stores curate their offerings, vet vendors, deal with returns etc...

Amazon is more like shopping mall that decides to start operating their own stores and competing with their tenants.

<comment><USER9> You have a point but I think the fact that grocery stores sell private label goods is the counter-point. Grocery stores re-package goods like rice, beans, paper towels, etc. to compete with their vendors all the time. We call them supermarkets, right? A grocery store is simply a more organized open market. Which is very comparable to Amazon.

I think the problem is that they present the results on good faith that "these results are the best match for you based on your search", not the most profitable for them.

I just ran a search and the default search filter was "Featured", which is so ambiguous it could mean anything, so it seems like a classic bait and switch that played out over the course of a decade of consumers getting the best search results based on reviews and sales.

<comment><USER10> > A grocery store is simply a more organized open market.

That's not true though right? Don't grocery stores buy the products that are on their shelves and they are reselling them? That's fundamentally different from a marketplace.

<comment><USER11> I think that's true for most goods, but there were definitely brands that stocked their own shelves at Publix when I worked there.

That said, _what_ brands got that special treatment was very much decided by Publix, so they were still curating the selection, they just weren't paying up-front for the goods or responsible for keeping those shelves looking good.

<comment><USER8> Generally Publix still owns that inventory though (even if they have a buyback guarantee) My dad worked for Lance snacks when I was a kid. He stocked the shelves, but the stores paid him for the product.

<comment><USER11> Did they pay him for the product before or after it was sold? I never really knew which way it went, but assumed that since the entire thing, except checkout, was handled by the rep, Publix never really owed the product, they just sold it as if it were on consignment.

<comment><USER8> They paid him before. But really big stores would buy the whole thing on credit.

They definitely owned the product, while it was on their shelves.

Even if a vendor has a buyback guarantee for expired product, if someone were to break in and steal all the product, its the store who is liable not the vendor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> We definitely need platform legislation for the web.

After a certain size, they should be regulated as public utilities. So many companies completely depend on Amazon's platform for their business and they're all easy prey for the behemoth.

I did some work for a company that sells batteries on Amazon. A simple dispute got them suspended across the board. A decision made by a third rate employee from god knows where, probably without even a cursory reading of the case, made in a split second, brought down a company with 10 years in the market and hundreds of employees.

No due process, no rights, nothing. You can't defend yourself, they just shut you down and then you have to beg for weeks to be let back in. After weeks and hundreds of thousands in losses, you have no legal recourse against a wrongful suspension.

You can make the argument that they could just set up their own online store for the batteries and you're right, they can. But amazon and ebay are so big that its practically impossible to sell these things at scale without them. Its not a fair game and this is but one of the issues.

They definitely need to be treated as public utilities after a certain amount of users.

<comment><USER13> You're describing a monopoly and the proper tool to deal with it is anti- trust, not entrenching it by pretending it's a public utility.

<comment><USER14> What would that look like though? If consumers wanted to go to 20 different stores to shop online, they'd already be doing that.

<comment><USER15> > What would that look like though? If consumers wanted to go to 20 different > stores to shop online, they'd already be doing that.

They do. Amazon accounts for about 47% of online retail. The rest is divided up among a bunch of other sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Umm, good? I want genuine products with an assured supply chain, not any random counterfeit that gets commingled.

<comment><USER17> So the solution to counterfeits on Amazon is to only buy Amazon brands? I'd prefer they address their counterfeit problem directly.

<comment><USER16> I would like it if when you specifically bought "sold by Amazon" products or chose that as an option you were guaranteed a genuine item but with "shipped by Amazon" that ship (hah!) has unfortunately sailed. They won't be accepting anything from third party sellers that has Amazon branding on, so it's safe.

<comment><USER18> > _" They won't be accepting anything from third party sellers that has Amazon > branding on...."_

I feel like that assertion has to be tested.

Amazon demonstrably cannot weed out counterfeits of other well-known brands. If it can weed out counterfeits for it's own brand, we will know that it has chosen not to expend the effort for anyone else, and therefore cannot be trusted to sell those brands in its marketplace. If it cannot, we then know it lacks the capability, and therefore cannot be trusted to sell those brands in its marketplace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's too bad that Sears never really got into online. They were once the top catalog retailer, and known for consistent quality, good warranties, and boring products. Somehow they missed the Internet, retiring from catalog operations just as Internet shopping got going.

<comment><USER20> Because Sears was a company in the process of being looted and trashed for at least the last couple of decades. I've had experiences in Sears of spending 15 minutes just _looking for an employee._ It had become a company so actively not interested in revenue that it actually became difficult to buy things there. At least they kept the stores clean; it seems like after they bought K-Mart, K-Mart literally stopped mopping the floors.

<comment><USER21> >I've had experiences in Sears of spending 15 minutes just looking for an employee Reminds me of an anecdote someone told me more than 15 years ago of him searching for a Sears employee and finding one literally hiding/crouching behind/underneath his register to avoid having to do his job. I would have thought it were an isolated thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm glad they do this! I publish books on Amazon.com using Amazon KDP, and it's impossible to compete on a level playing field in brick-and-mortar bookstores. Distributors won't touch self-published titles. And I can't offer them at a cheaper price, due to the nature of print on demand (much pricier to print compared to doing a print run in China).

The ONLY advantage I have is that my titles are more promoted by Amazon in the search results (since they make a killing off the higher margins, even when they decide to discount it themselves). If Amazon wasn't boosting KDP self- published titles in the search results, it wouldn't work... period, in my opinion. I wouldn't even try.

And if anyone from Amazon is reading this, you guys should allow the authors to purchase the title in bulk at a much cheaper rate, so that reselling to local bookstores is a viable option.

</comment><comment><USER23> My problem with Amazon is that I dont know what to trust anymore. For every product I buy off Amazon, I spend time reading "verified purchase" reviews, 1 star and 2 star reviews and may be then find an item that seems legitimate and durable. I only recently learned that "Amazon's Choice in category X" label does not necessarily mean that Amazon has actually vetted that item. So my experience shopping at Amazon has drastically changed.

</comment><comment><USER24> According to the book 'The Everything Store,' Amazon's search engine is a matter of internal contention. Years ago, when people noticed that Amazon's search engine was terrible (as it is), someone from another group in the company developed a new search system based on Elasticsearch and more modern technologies. He presented the new search to Bezos. But there was an existing team whose primary responsibility was the search functionality. And the man who led that team was one of Bezos' personal friends. That man was, apparently, petty and status-seeking, so pushed back against adopting the new search engine. Bezos proposed that there would be a contest between the old and new search engines. Judged by his friend, head of the current bad search engine team who didn't want the new search because it threatened his status. Predictably, the new search 'lost.'

<comment><USER25> This sort of thing makes me sick, and I'm familiar with the feeling because I've seen this several times in my career. But the older I get, the more a tiny kernel of respect grows in me for the kind of person that can parley a modicum of technical understanding into an unassailable political position in a large company, and succeed -- at least in terms of money and influence -- despite the opportunity costs I've witnessed. You just kind of have to hand it to people like this. I guess. Maybe that's the only way I stay sane at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you're a manufacturer without a strong brand, it's incredibly risky selling through Amazon. They will take your sales data to evaluate ROI of building it themselves , and then undercut you.

Similar if you're a retailer.

This is why Shopify's new model is better for D2C and retail (but very difficult for them to pull off).

<comment><USER27> Also, a factory can produce a counterfeit of your product and sell it on Amazon on the same listing as your genuine product, with no way the customer can tell which they're buying.

<comment><USER28> Hell, that factory can produce an AmazonBasics-branded version of your product too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> ANTITRUST!

If Microsoft can get hammered for packaging Internet Explorer with Windows (and probably rightly so, given the market conditions at the time), there is a direct analogy to be made here.

Pick what you want to be: if you want to be the greatest goods index and shipment company in the world, fantastic. But you have to accept that you cannot sneak some of your own other-products to the top using that power. In this case, spin off your Kindle etc companies or have them broken up.

<comment><USER30> No, there is not a direct analogy _because Amazon is not a monopoly_. They aren't even the largest retailer.

<comment><USER29> I feel there's an argument to be made for Amazon having a near-monopoly on online sales and distribution in many countries, even outside America.

They've simply nailed it and scaled it. In New Zealand a company called TradeMe got there first and successfully fended off Amazon, but that's a minority case.

There are pros (e.g. consumers love it) and cons (e.g. human toll when optimising efficiency without robots) to having Amazon dominate in whatever country, but you can't deny, they get the job done. There isn't really another company competing with them at that level, is there? And that's why I think it's an effective monopoly.

To abuse this wide-reaching power, in making your own stuff rise to the top of world sales, is absolutely a concern and we should honestly be grateful that there are laws and funded agencies giving a shit about this.

<comment><USER30> We are so early in the shift to online retailing. People using Amazon for stuff other than books, DVDs, and CDs only became a thing in the last 10 years. Walmart has barely started to get their shit together with online retailing. Same for the major supermarket chains. They have an incredible physical presence with huge transaction volume that they can leverage into their online efforts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "After the Journal's inquiries, Amazon took down its A9 website, which had stood for about a decade and a half. The site included the statement: 'One of A9's tenets is that relevance is in the eye of the customer and we strive to get the best results for our users.'"

Huh, that's an interesting reaction.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've always considered Amazon's search system as pretty bad, often ignoring keywords to get more search results. It does look like their sort by price mechanism has improved. eBay has my favourite search system because it's willing to admit if there are no results and allow me create an e-mail alert. It also allows negation and lets me use parentheses to define a logical "or" as part of the query.

</comment><comment><USER33> As someone who works in search this is unsurprising, and happens all the time. Search is a two sided sales exercise both to show you good products and also to products that make the e-commerce business money. Search is the e-commerce businesses sales person - not a neutral broker. You don't expect the blue shirt at Best Buy to be entirely neutral do you?

It's actually a pretty understudied microeconomics case

[https://opensourceconnections.com/blog/2017/07/04/optimizing...](https://opensourceconnections.com/blog/2017/07/04/optimizing- user-product-match-economies/)

</comment><comment><USER34> I was so annoyed by the promoted products and expert recommendations that I wrote a Chrome/Firefox extension that hides them. It needs to be updated but mostly works as expected: [http://mdolon.com/projects/shopsuey](http://mdolon.com/projects/shopsuey)

</comment><comment><USER35> Shocking.

If you go into a candy store where the owner also makes their own brand of candy, what do you think will be the most prominent item on the shelf?

<comment><USER36> That's not really comparable. The candy store owner is still paying for the other brand of candy to collect dust.

Amazon isn't exposed to the same risks in a lot of product listings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I've taken to keeping a copy of Fakespot[0] open in an incognito browser and regularly submit Amazon URLs to it. Over the past month or so, I've looked at everything from headphones to shampoo and been boggled at the amount of rigging that goes on.

While I can't say for sure that their algorithms are always spot on, they give some interesting feedback in terms of recent review count history, price history, whether Amazon has recently bulk deleted reviews, and some heuristic comment quality ratings. So often I've found that Amazon's Choice is questionable: 4.8 stars, hundreds of reviews within the last 30 days on a slickly packaged, no-name electronics gadget is all too common.

Typically, I use Fakespot to look for red flags, flip back to the reviews area on Amazon, sort them by Most Recent Reviews, and dig around. I don't use the Fakespot Chrome extension, though. Too invasive for my tastes.

[0] [https://www.fakespot.com](https://www.fakespot.com)

</comment><comment><USER38> Side rant: Where is my Amazon branded phone case?!? This weekend I placed a half dozen searches for "iphone 11 case" and was only presented with super shady, low quality vendors.

Floveme? Tendam? Donse? Spigen? and my favorite: Vapesoon.

Is it just too early for the legit brands to have a case ready? Or am I doing it wrong?

<comment><USER39> Spigen is a legit brand

<comment><USER38> Cool, thanks for that! Beyond Speck and OtterBox I actually couldn't name any other legit brands. I had an easier time finding seemingly "legit" brands via Google.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> You don't have to be an rocket surgeon to see that amazon search sucks. I wouldn't even call amazon search "Search".

If I have one file on my computer named "Amazon Search Sucks ASS.txt" and I search for it by name, in quotes, I expect to see only one result.

A similar search on amazon will return a bunch of results many of them have nothing to do with the words I typed, not in the title, description, etc.

DON'T GET ME STARTED ON SORTING BASED ON PRICE!!! The number of search results should not change based on how you sort the result list!!!

Bezoz should just stick to sexting...

</comment><comment><USER41> There was a post on HN a while back about Apple boosting it's own apps in their App Store search. Likewise, I am sure that Google prefers to show results from it's own companies (e.g. if I google the word "spreadsheet", my first result is for Google Sheets). This is all the same thing, no?

Edit: I'll add that I'm not saying it isn't an anti-competitive practice, I'm sure it is. But I am saying that it's a bit silly to insinuate that stores don't already advertise for their own goods.

<comment><USER42> It's worth noting Microsoft's own email offering is _third_ on a Bing search for "email": [https://www.bing.com/search?q=email](https://www.bing.com/search?q=email)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> The only reason I still use Amazon is because it's so easy to buy things using Bitcoin/Ethereum on it. I can get giftcards from literally hundreds of vendors (some even at a discount), or use a service like Moon which makes the gift card buying fully transparent (I just click checkout and scan the qr code with my phone), and I can buy almost anything on Amazon.

Everywhere else requires me to convert coin into USD and then buy things, which sucks.

<comment><USER44> Aren't you effectively converting to USD by buying gift cards?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I don't see anything surprising or unusual about this. It's hardly different from a supermarket giving better display positions for their store brand.

</comment><comment><USER46> Honestly, what's the big deal?

Google prioritizes certain websites/results when I enter queries too, it doesn't mean I'm required to click on them.

What ever happened to people spending a few extra minutes looking for the result they want? If the first few aren't correct for you then move on. Unless you're spending an extra 30+ minutes because the search doesn't work correctly at all then there's no issue here.

<comment><USER47> If you have a product that's negatively affected by this, then this is kind of a big deal. If you look at the marketing data, most people don't like spending a dozen extra seconds, much less a few extra minutes, finding what they want.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I'm not sure how this is news. Maybe I'm too in the bubble, but I thought every tech company used their platforms to promote their own wares. VScode gives me tools to build AKS clusters but not GKE clusters. Facebook wants me to use their marketplace, dating service, etc. Google is boosting Google Flights over travel sites. It's unsavory and betrays their guise of impartiality, but is nothing close to illegal.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm certainly no Amazon fan (read: they are my last choice when I run out of options), but this title/headline should be:

Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Maximized Its Profits

In other words, no news here really.

Shareholders come first. The customers (who are presumedly happier getting better prices) come next. Finally, last comes Amazon's vendors.

In other words, no news here really.

Perhaps the follow up could be:

WSJ Use Clickbait Headlines to Boost Its Own Agenda And Ad Revenues

</comment><comment><USER50> Without getting into whether what Amazon is doing is right or wrong, as a vendor, you have to accept reality for what it is and come up with a business plan that gives you an "unfair advantage".

Selling physical goods is a three part process - manufacturing, marketing, and selling. At each part of the process, you have to know what helps you stand out.

Manufacturing - is there something that enables you to manufacturer a product that can't easily be copied or that allows you to create the product cheaper than competitors?

Marketing - are you depending on SEO and Google ads just like all of your competitors?

Selling - Are you depending on Amazon just like all of your competitors?

You have to be able to optimize on at least one of those areas or you're going to find yourself competing on price at either slim, no or negative margins or being lost in a marketplace where everyone is doing the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER18> Given the functionality of Amazon's search algorithm before this, I can't exactly say that any changes to it could make it worse.

I can't even count the number of times I have searched for Product-X, by lowest price, and encountered a dozen pages of Clearly-Not-X and Actually- Just-An-Accessory-For-X before even reaching the first X.

Or Item-Sold-By-Weight-Y, that comes in 30 different package sizes, none of which is tagged with comparable unit prices. If you want some Y, you cannot order your search by $/kg or $/L. And sometimes it's difficult to figure out exactly how much Y you would be getting. The giant barrel of industrial generic will be listed next to the 20 oz bottle of gold-plated spiritual-grade Woo-Woo brand.

</comment><comment><USER51> Could we take a break with these articles for a bit? I'm all for redistributing Jeff Bezos's money, and I'd be happy to have mine redistributed as well if that happened, but this and the Apple App Store algorithm news are so insignificant in the world. We're arguing about if online stores can organize their shelves how they want to while people are dying because they can't afford insulin or drink their tapwater. Yeah, you can care about two issues at once, but this isn't really an issue. I don't care to read the same comment about Microsoft with Internet Explorer every day. Maybe it's unfair to them but I really do not care, they clearly survived just fine.

<comment><USER52> Honestly and without sarcasm, maybe just take a break from this site? If those are the kinds of issues that you want to find more about, I don't think this is the right venue. Yes, HN does dabble in politics sometimes but for the most part, this isn't a place to talk about the "big issues".

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> When we finally decide to chop up these monopolies, I'd like "competing with your own clients" to be a consideration.

I don't mind that Apple runs an App Store. I mind that they have an unfair advantage over their competition.

I don't mind that Google reams advertisers. I mind that they sit on both sides of the brokerage, thereby taking advantage of their own clients.

It's like the "firewall" between financial advisors and investment ratings for those bankers. That crap needs to be kept separate, to prevent perverse incentives, self-dealing, conflicts of interest, fraud, unfair advantages, etc.

</comment><comment><USER54> I see folks saying that it is good for consumers because Amazon products are better quality that the other sellers who tend to be unreliable. However, we are missing the long-term impact of this - (a) It will slowly kill competition, at which point Amazon products no longer have to be better quality. (b) It kills innovation because anyone who wants to sell stuff online knows Amazon is going to copy the product soon enough.

Why is this not an antitrust case? Amazon has the monopoly on online retail I assume, so isn't ranking it's own products higher an antitrust violation?

</comment><comment><USER55> Amazons in a weird boat. Like building a marketplace where they are the most dominant player and they favor themselves.

But I guess that's how supermarkets are too. I buy Krogers brands because I know they'll be vetted and meet a certain bar. If I don't like it, I can always return it for a refund.

It's not great for competition and Amazon can easily boost crappy cheap products.

Amazon is a massive beast. What is the alternative with better experience ?

</comment><comment><USER56> Wow, had no idea they were still using the A9 moniker at all. I'll always remember it as their ill-fated Google competitor that they tried to make cool by shoehorning into perhaps the cringeworthiest moment of an already- cringeworthy show: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNZ-3KLF7A0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNZ-3KLF7A0)

</comment><comment><USER57> >Amazon says it operates in fiercely competitive markets, it represents less than 1% of global retail and its private-label business represents about 1% of its retail sales.

While the graph towards the end of the article indicates Amazon captures ~35% of online retail in the US

What a disingenuous way for Amazon to communicate - I hope the people their original quote was directed to saw right through this.

</comment><comment><USER58> Anytime a competitor to Amazon wants to step up and play the game, I'd be more than excited to switch the place where I do my shopping.

</comment><comment><USER59> I never use Amazon's site search to try and find anything, because it's just horribly bad and broken. In my experience the more specific my search terms are, the worse the results.

If I'm looking for something on Amazon I use Google and the "site:" prefix, and use the meta returned by Google's search engines to find what I'm after.

</comment><comment><USER60> Was there some level of assumption that Amazons search isn't going to favor Amazon to some degree? When I search on Wal-Mart's website, the top results are _normally_ the wal-mart label, or they're at least on the first page.

The value of Amazon to me, is similar to Steam. Amazon's influence of product reviews is more concerning to me, anyway.

</comment><comment><USER61> Wonder how the new shipping agreement (or rather a break up of the old international shipping agreement : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20810142](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20810142) ) will affect this. This might make it less attractive for items from China.

</comment><comment><USER62> They do that with their content also. There is no way to only see prime videos. They constantly push their paid content onto the main feed. On top of that there is no way to restrict purchase or gate it with a password on smart TVs so it's a bad experience. Of course amazon doesn't much care about user experience.

<comment><USER63> I have to enter a pin every time on my smart TVs. I thought every smart tv had that feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Amazon already lost all my "customer trust" when I found out they not only sold but endorsed untested, toxic Chinese toys. The slogan seemed sincere enough when I worked there. I guess it's a casualty of the recent drive for profitability.

</comment><comment><USER65> I'm so annoyed with the inferiority of the search experience on Amazon. For example when i search for shoes in my size, why doesn't it show the price for the shoes in my size? It's super inconvenient.

</comment><comment><USER66> People want the large networks and platforms that tech monopolies provide. In order to get that without the private centralized control, we need to turn to decentralized technologies.

</comment><comment><USER67> Does that mean search on Amazon will finally work? How is it possible to have so many products and not care about the ability for customers to actually find what they're looking for?

</comment><comment><USER68> Excuse me, what's the news here?

A company wants to maximize its profit.

If it is wasn't that way, they would be acting illegaly.

(publicly trading company must seek shareholders profit)

So what is the news once again?

<comment><USER69> > If it is wasn't that way, they would be acting illegally.

Common misconception.

> Corporate directors are not required to maximize shareholder value.

[https://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/academics/clarke_business_...](https://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/academics/clarke_business_law_institute/corporations- and-society/Common-Misunderstandings-About-Corporations.cfm)

<comment><USER68> Interesting.

"Usually maximizing shareholder value is not a legal obligation, but the product of the pressure that activist shareholders, stock-based compensation schemes and financial markets impose on corporate directors."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Amazon should be required to display product origin.

</comment><comment><USER71> Well as long as they present -some- other options I'm fine with it. I always look through the first 2 or 3 pages.

</comment><comment><USER72> >Amazon's lawyers rejected an initial proposal for how to add profit directly into the algorithm, saying it represented a change that could create trouble with antitrust regulators, one of the people familiar with the project said.

I wonder in what was they tweaked it so that the lawyers approved this change? I wonder if regulators will care if it skirts the letter of that law when the intention was to attempt to sneak by oversight by the FTC and the DOJ?

<comment><USER73> Later on in the article they explain that the initial approach was to include the profitability of an item directly in its metadata so that the algorithm could use that in its ranking criteria.

They changed their approach to instead measure how much profit Amazon makes on a given search. This allows them to analyze whether various changes to the search algorithm increase or decrease profit, and optimize for those that do.

It's a subtle distinction but it means that instead of explicitly promoting their products in search, they are instead making changes based on other product attributes that naturally boost the ranking of their products (and thus increase their profits).

It's kind of like a blind study: they're telling the engineers, "we won't tell you which products are ours, but we'll see if you can figure it out based on these 100 other traits."

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I just wish they'd bring the "Ships and sold by amazon.com" checkbox back.

The rest is pretty much garbage.

</comment><comment><USER75> "Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Boost Its Own Products", and the sun is hot

<comment><USER76> Read between the lines: "Amazon Changed Search Algorithm in Ways That Lower Customer Satisfaction." That's less obvious because Amazon traditionally has been a customer-focused company, and this is a step away from that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> We need a browser plugin which can read a product name and tell us: Amazon brand or not?

</comment><comment><USER78> It's within their rights to do so and frankly a move most of us would make, no?

<comment><USER79> Google got fined $3B for this exact thing on Google Shopping in the EU. "Within their rights" is highly dependent on location.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> The article is disappointingly misleading and buries one of the key details

 _" Amazon's lawyers rejected the overt addition of contribution profit into the algorithm...

They turned to the metrics Amazon uses to test the algorithm's success in reaching certain business objectives, said the people who worked on the project.

When engineers test new variables in the algorithm, Amazon gauges the results against a handful of metrics. Among these metrics: unit sales of listings and the dollar value of orders for listings. Positive results for the metrics correlated with high customer satisfaction and helped determine the ranking of listings a search presented to the customer.

Now, engineers would need to consider another metric—improving profitability—said the people who worked on the project. Variables added to the algorithm would essentially become what one of these people called "proxies" for profit: The variables would correlate with improved profitability for Amazon, but an outside observer might not be able to tell that. The variables could also inherently be good for the customer."_

Tldr: some people in Amazon wanted to give a boost to Amazon-products. The search team fought them vociferously and refused to budge. The lawyers came out against it as well. Amazon's internal A/B testing framework measures a number of metrics, including both revenue and profit, when determining whether a specific feature/change should be deployed.

The fact that the A/B testing framework measures the profit impact of any change, is hardly earth shattering. This is one of the core features that any A/B testing framework attempts to accomplish.

This also doesn't tell you anything about what the search algorithm is actually doing. An A/B testing framework can only help you evaluate the relative effectiveness of different algorithms. It doesn't actually create/influence the algorithm in any way. As WSJ themselves reported, Amazon's search algorithm does not take profitability as an input.

WSJ has done a fantastic job in unearthing this very interesting internal- debate that's happening in Amazon. But they have reported it in a way that is very misleading and gives laypeople the impression that they have a smoking gun. In reality, the only thing they have produced is the fact that Amazon's A/B testing framework is profit-aware.

<comment><USER81> Thank you. I was struggling to understand what the article was trying to tell me or why it was so lengthy. It feels like news has evolved to buzzword/sensationalist headline + enough content/data (even if irrelevant) to provide a sense of comprehensiveness/substance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> and have a look at how they are even using fake reviews on their own products:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20819344](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20819344)

</comment><comment><USER83> This should be a massive lawsuit on behalf of all 3rd party sellers.

</comment><comment><USER84> Would you have done something different? It's business as usual.

</comment><comment><USER85> How is this worse than the sponsored results?

</comment><comment><USER86> In other news, people get older as they age.

</comment><comment><USER87> Put a check box saying "amazon choice only"

World gets better.

</comment><comment><USER88> I cannot imagine using Amazon search if they didn't do this and let 3rd party garbage sit at the top of the rankings.

</comment><comment><USER89> Interesting

</comment><comment><USER90> who does not now a days.

</comment><comment><USER91> Should have just put the ones who pay the most ahead.

</comment><comment><USER92> Amazon is not a search engine. You are doing it wrong!

</comment><comment><USER93> It's not surprising that, given this kind of power, they would use it. What's a little unsettling is how little concern they have for people selling on their platform. If they treat their vendors like shit, and compete with them directly, that will incentivise said vendors to look for alternative platforms. You might say "who cares, there is no real competition for Amazon", but competition will come. What is Amazon going to do, are they planning to make their own version of every single product out there? I don't think that can scale.

<comment><USER94> The competition is not zero. Walmart and alibaba to name two, not aws scale but aspiring.

Also some alliances like Target + Shipt are nipping at their heels with same day delivery. [https://www.target.com/c/shipt/-/N-t4bob](https://www.target.com/c/shipt/-/N-t4bob)

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Of course. Good for them. It's their fucking store!

> Amazon has adjusted its product-search system to more prominently feature > listings that are more profitable for the company

Unthinkable. A store trying to make a profit selling things. How crazy.

<comment><USER96> Is this only being down voted because of tone?

I am curious if there _actually_ are any laws relevant to this situation. As far as I can tell, this is exactly like Walmart or BigBoxCo pushing their own brands. It's not illegal and, generally, it's not even a bad thing for the consumer (in the short term).

It really feels like most of the people taking issue with this are doing so because of their personal sentiments rather than legality.

<comment><USER97> I think it's downvotes because Amazon is not a store, it's a marketplace. And it's well different than BigBox because there is way less capital outlay for both property and goods.

Downvotes for bad information, not snark

<comment><USER95> "marketplace" is just a word, not a legal fiction/status like "corporation".

AFAIK US antitrust law does not have any concept of "marketplaces."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> Here is what i want to shop by on amazon:

* kitchen

* wash

* garage

—-

Basically, id like to setup a standard or select a standard product lineup and say "refill my kitchen"

"Refill my bathroom set"

"Refill my washing supplies"

Etc...

And you could see the averaged products used to supply each area of the home...

This goes in line with a previous YC application i had submitted which was called "standard pantry"

The idea was that a pantry cabinet would be delivered to you, with ingredients and recipes on how to make various healthy dishes based on the whole pantry of ingredients. The goal being to raise nutritional health, especially among lower income.

And with a smart pantry it would give you recipe ideasbased on what you have and know what ingredients you lack and auto order

Like a netflix for healthy food...

YC hated it...</comment>


Facebook  says it will use AI to determine when someone has died - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/04/09/711399357/facebook-promises-to-stop-asking-you-to-wish-happy-birthday-to-your-friend-who-d <comment><USER2> >Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on Monday announced that the social network will use artificial intelligence to determine when someone has died, and stop sending those kinds of notifications.

Can't wait until the facebook neural net declares me dead because of my sclerotic post activity and my family thinks I've kicked the bucket when they don't get an announcenment on my birthday.

Maybe instead of trying to solve everything with 'artificial intelligence' we ought to design these systems in ways that are less prone to these sorts of misbehaviours. Seems like building systems that work 80% of the time and then hoping that throwing ML engineers at the issue solves the last 20% is the new hot design pattern.

<comment><USER3> Your family's only measure on whether you're alive or not is the yearly birthday reminder from Facebook?

In all seriousness, what do you expect them to do? They can't have a checkbox "I am dead" for you to click after you pass, so they're using a bit of data science to try and reduce the heartache of accidentally reminding someone when you might be dead.

I'm no fan of facebook, I don't have an account and I think they are a net negative in the world, but sometimes they're just trying to do the right thing, and credit where it's due

<comment><USER2> >Your family's only measure on whether you're alive or not is the yearly birthday reminder from Facebook?

I work in a foreign country, so I guess there's the possibility that remote family might at least be concerned if something like that happened.

>In all seriousness, what do you expect them to do?

give me control over when I broadcast out birthday reminders, because as an infrequent user I would simply turn it off. Problem solved.

Obviously it is not in Facebook's interest to give me control over my feed or activity to this degree, so it will never happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Birthday reminders are one of the reasons I've practically abandoned Facebook.

Seeing people wish you happy birthday on there by clicking a button encapsulates how false the narrative is; if the reason you remembered my birthday is that Facebook told you then we don't have a relationship where you should be sending me a birthday message.

The only thing more annoying is that now LinkedIn does it too. That's just weird.

<comment><USER5> Of the relationships where you should be sending people a birthday message, do you have all of their birthdays memorized, or do you use a calendar? I dont really see the difference between using facebook or a gmail calendar for reminders such as these.

I'll agree that the simple "Happy Birthday" messages people post on facebook are trite, but rather frequently I'm reminded that it's someone's birthday via facebook and then text or call the person.

<comment><USER6> _Of the relationships where you should be sending people a birthday message, do you have all of their birthdays memorized, or do you use a calendar?_

I'm not the OP, but yes, I have a calendar with people's birthdays in it. Every computer since the 1980's comes with a calendar program, and now they sync to your mobile phone, so there's no need to pass responsibility for that sort of thing to Facebook.

I also send ( _gasp_ ) paper birthday and Christmas cards to the people who mean a lot to me. And from what they tell me, getting a real card in the mail means a million times more to them, since they know I took time out of my life to think of them and didn't just click a button and move on.

<comment><USER7> But you bought a pre-produced, mass-printed card that someone else designed. Not very personal. How is that much different from a clicky-greeting on Facebook, other than cost?

<comment><USER8> Effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Back in the day" I changed my birthday several times a year to see if anyone actually notices or people just push a button mindlessly.

I ended up having generic happy-birthday wishes by the same people over and over.

<comment><USER10> I learned that you can have a birthday every 10'ish months and no one will notice. (Except for people who actually know when it's your birthday obviously.) More than that and people will start to catch on.

<comment><USER11> How did you learn that 10 months is the threshold?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This kind of reminder can happen even if the person isn't on Facebook. Every few months, a "Hey, remember this from 5 years ago?" photo pops up with a now- deceased friend of mine. It's depressing, and my effort to get Facebook to stop showing me "Do you want to share this memory?" photos has failed. She wasn't even on Facebook. I suppose I could go through all my old photos and delete them, but I'd prefer not to be prompted at all.

</comment><comment><USER13> >FB will use artificial intelligence to determine when someone has died

Everything about Facebook looks terrible

</comment><comment><USER14> Actually, I kind of like that. Brings back memories of them.

<comment><USER15> I'm with you. Its nice to remember, and it's nice to see the annual post when all the people who loved them can reminisce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's a start. How about allowing blocking all birthday and Billy Bob and Scooter have been friends for x years messages too?

</comment><comment><USER17> AI seems to have become the default solution for any of Facebook's problems with its platform. It sounds great, but I start to wonder how practical is it. Can they really determine if you are died with high probability? You would need quite a lot of personal data from your friends and family to determine that. oh wait..

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder why nobody's gotten around to it yet. Could it be complicated to decide if someone passed away or not?

<comment><USER19> You can memorialize the account of someone dead without too much difficulty, they get a "Remembering" tag on the profile. [https://facebook.com/help/103897939701143](https://facebook.com/help/103897939701143)

<comment><USER20> Having experienced this myself first-hand:

It's not hard, but you need to know that telling FB that your friend is dead is even an option, then go search for that. For most of us that probably seems pretty simple, but we're definitely the outliers in regards to technical sophistication and knowing how a site 'should' work.

In addition, there's the 'etiquette' of trying to figure out if you, as a friend, should do that, or whether you should leave it to their family, and then wondering if their family even knows about their FB profile, etc.

As the article pointed out, 'there are likely far more accounts that haven't been memorialized' \- which suggests that people don't do it.

<comment><USER19> That's fair. If I didn't do it for my mom, I doubt it'd have been done. I don't even think I'd consider doing it for a friend, that's something I'd leave in the hands of whoever has the death certificate.

Facebook surely indexes a lot of the internet, "AI techniques" like entity resolution on obituaries would probably go a long way to finding unreported deaths.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not all memories aren't happy...

Like the happy memories of my ex-wife which are now a tragedy to me -- that everyday Facebook wants to remind me about. I don't use facebook much.

There should be a filter button such that I can say, "I don't want to hear about this person anymore."

</comment><comment><USER22> > Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on Monday announced that the social network > will use artificial intelligence to determine when someone has died, and > stop sending those kinds of notifications.

Since there is no way Facebook will get 100% recall: no, it will not stop doing that.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm sure whatever technical achievement solved this problem will somehow lead to people instead offering condolences on the passing of their still-living friends.

</comment><comment><USER24> false positives incoming... also convincing fb you're dead (instead of deleting your account) will become a new dark pattern?

</comment><comment><USER25> Tired of this media narrative. Why spin a positive feature into something negative?</comment>