Can we defend ourselves against large corporations?

The truth is that it is not easy, since they are very powerful and have almost infinite resources to delay decisions based on interpellations of the many lawyers at their disposal.

And also, why not say it, due to the indecision of politicians who speak a lot and do very little.

A close example is the Irish declaration that Facebook must comply with the GDPR standard and stop sending the data of its customers in Europe to the USA.

The European data protection standard (GDPR) has been in force for several years and all companies know it thoroughly. And so far Facebook has ignored it and has continued to send the data of its customers in Europe to the USA.

When Ireland has informed Facebook that they cannot continue to do so, it has responded by “threatening” that they could stop offering their services in Europe. And worst of all, there has been no one who has told them clearly: then to leave.

Because Facebook, like many other applications, are not essential for people’s lives, even if they have many customers hooked on them.

Countries cannot be blackmailed by companies, and if in Europe we have decided to give ourselves some protection guidelines for our data, companies accept them or leave. Period.

Just so we have some data, Facebook generated in 2019 in Europe more than 13 dollars a year for each user, and in the USA more than 40 dollars per user. It is clear that in the USA Facebook obtains more data from its users, and that is why it earns more.

In 2018, the University of Oxford (UK) analyzed the data flow of many Google Play APPs in the UK and the USA, and found that on average one APP sent its users’ data to 5 data monitoring companies, and the 17% of them sent the data to more than 10 trackers.

On the other hand, more than 90% of the APPs sent the data to companies in the USA, and 5% of them to companies in China.

That is the “big business” they have with our data, and from which thousands of APPs live.

I am very clear that Facebook is not going to leave Europe, and what it will do is take legal action to delay the decision of the European authorities and continue to obtain the maximum benefits for as long as possible. And for this they will hire as many lawyers as necessary.

As I said at the beginning of my reflection, large companies have interests that do not coincide with those of the society in which they are immersed, and since they are so powerful and have so many economic means, they manage to delay the application of the laws for many years (sometimes tens of years) to continue to pursue their own interests.

I can even understand that, but what I don’t understand is the passivity with which our leaders are slow to react to defend our interests.

It is a shame that laws are created and that are later not applied.