Clickbait headline.<p>Facebook was not "blocked" - they voluntarily halted the rollout of the feature themselves. NOBODY told them to do this.<p>Reading between the lines, someone at Facebook's legal department was asleep at the wheel and forgot to provide the authorities with the required documentation. The DPC nudged them a bit and Facebook hit the panic button.
It was garbage anyway. I used it briefly during the first week it launched in the United States and, at least here in Indy, about every fourth girl was blatantly in a relationship. Some even had kissy-face wedding photos in their profiles. Facebook only gives you the option if your profile is set to single but that's just a toggle.<p>That first week it was also already full of blatantly fake profiles. You're telling me there are three women that look identical to Kevin Smith's daughter and just happened to be at the same red carpet event, with the same dress, in the exact same pose? And then despite me having it set to female it showed me several men that I'm 99% certain were not trans and were either idiots and set their Facebook profile up wrong, or intentionally input things wrong to try and obfuscate their data profile.<p>It also made the promise (I think they did anyway) of not showing you people you were friends with. It didn't, but it did show me a bunch of my graduating class from 16 years prior and gobs of friends of friends. I saw considerably more people on it that I knew/knew of than I ever did with Tinder/OkCupid/Bumble.
Only one week and regulatory forces managed to push back?!<p>I wonder when someone from the same regulatory forces will help Ruben out: <a href="https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/" rel="nofollow">https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/</a><p>He's been waiting for over a year now for his actual dataset - fighting for us all.
Ireland has a lot of strange relationships with large tech companies, but I can say for sure, we have some great data protection laws.<p>Genuinely delighted that some people pay attention to these things and know what they're talking about.
Comments from FB are boatloads of bullshit, as expected. How nice to see that not everybody lets themselves get fucked over by them as a matter of course, like in the US. Cheers to Ireland.
It's Facebook after all, so of course there is no privacy there. Imagine using this service and with their total lack of privacy and having your preferences spilled out. Same as putting them on a billboard.
I'm personally thinking it's sad such resources and effort are expended over something as frivolous as a dating app. If there are significant irregularities it's better to just fine them a couple of billion later. Better for the wallet, too.
It feels wierd to read an american article that uses word like 'fuck you' and 'fucked up'. I kind of like the brutal honesty of the word usage.
Slight tangent, but it seems that TechCrunch are also quite bad at privacy - following the link initially redirects to <a href="https://guce.techcrunch.com/consent?brandType=nonEU&done=https%3A%2F%2Ftechcrunch%2Ecom%2F2020%2F02%2F13%2Ffacebook%2Ddating%2Dlaunch%2Dblocked%2Din%2Deurope%2Dafter%2Dit%2Dfails%2Dto%2Dshow%2Dprivacy%2Dworkings%2F&gcrumb={{CRUMB}" rel="nofollow">https://guce.techcrunch.com/consent?brandType=nonEU&done=htt...</a>} with a 307, which, when followed redirects to <a href="https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_cc-session_{{GUID}" rel="nofollow">https://guce.advertising.com/collectIdentifiers?sessionId=3_...</a>} with a 302.<p>I like that the "consent" URL doesn't actually ask for consent - it just immediately redirects to "collect identifiers" - it's possible they already assume they have my consent, but since this was checked with a cookie-less cURL command, that seems unlikely. Since my adblocker is blocking the guce.advertising.com domain, I guess I don't get to visit TechCrunch.
Are they going after the 40+ dating market? Surely the dating app demographic isn't on Facebook anymore, though maybe Facebook is still popular in the 18-30 age range in Europe? I just don't know.
There are various takes on that, which of course depend on values each person (and country) considers as the most important.<p>In my personal opinion, Europe (in which I live) as an "Amish bias" [1], i.e. by default being more cautious about introducing new technologies. I am already annoyed by the constant cookie pop-ups that significantly affect my browsing experience but on mobile.<p>Yes, there are risks with all technologies. But with the current mindset, Europe is setting itself way back comparing to the USA... which is much more cautious than China. Or in other words, Europe sets itself to be the World's calm countryside, in which people live as they used to.<p>Some (maybe even the majority) may like it. Personally, I am asking myself from time to time - when it is time to move to Asia.<p>[1] <a href="https://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/" rel="nofollow">https://kk.org/thetechnium/amish-hackers-a/</a>
EU doesn't want me to find a girl, how sad :/ still thinks this could be much more usable than what become of Tinder, especially when there is no filters, which when you live near border could be sometimes really bad. Not that I have something against other nations, it's just convenient to look only for locals.