@Caute_cautim wrote:
A pretty desperate move to solve a problem, but highlights the importance of private data being protected and no misused.
A rather odd settlement if the judge allows this to go forward. Basically, the sides agree to bury the class-action but allow individual consumers to sue Google in California. The point of a class action is to avoid needlessly consuming public and judicial resources with millions of lawsuits rather than one. Great for attorneys, I guess, but bad for everyone else.
From Google's/Alphabet's standpoint, they'll destroy old data, but it doesn't change the current profile they have on everyone or the access they sell. It would seem to be a court-ordered destruction of evidence (no wonder Google is happy). In the US at least, we still struggle to understand the legal liability of these providers. Because our courts and lawmakers have wandered around so much, we've created the environment that has allowed these services to kill traditional news media (newspapers, radio, TV). We've raised a generation of people who now get their "news" from the shouting of social media, which largely has been exempted from the same legal standards as traditional news outlets thanks to the Communications Decency Act (i.e, "Section 230") of 1996 and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998. These were very short-sighted laws that created a handful of petulant billionaires at the expense of everyone else.
