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How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

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Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#91

Post by 77pt77 »

shadowtree wrote: post #32

And if you think GDPR is a toothless joke, let's take a look at the defined fine stucture. It is pretty simple, only 3 levels (strikes for the fellow Americans): Strike 1 - Stern warning letter Strike 2 - 2% of your TOTAL GLOBAL REVENUE Strike 3 - 4% of your TOTAL GLOBAL REVENUE (or 20mil EUR, whichever is higher) And now you know why GDPR is a board level topic. Keep in mind that the EU/US Safe Harbor agreement got…

> Strike 3 - 4% of your TOTAL GLOBAL REVENUE (or 20mil EUR, whichever is higher)

20mil EUR even for zero revenue?!

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#93

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

bflesch wrote: post #81
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose we fundamentally disagree on a few things here so I won't go into a discussion about the motivation of this law (which I as a EU citizen support). I do however want to leave a note on this quote here: > All the framing as "nefarious" is propaganda, consumers choose freely the option they value the most. Customers cannot choose freely. I'm a customer and I cannot chose certain products because they do not ex…

> Companies I never engage with are tracking my activities through tracking pixels and other things and because I never establish a business relationship with them, I cannot avoid that. You can easily avoid being tracked by using an adblocker. Other websites only track you because they are business partners of the tracking companies, which provide a lot of value in terms of analytics for the business - free of charge…

> You can easily avoid being tracked by using an adblocker.

Except not really. Plenty if tracking happens regardless based on fingerprinting. And even ignoring ads there are plenty of free services that after a while turn iut to be so shoddy that they lose the data i left on their services and provide no way for me to demand deletion.

I get a mail every other month that my email address and password where found in a data leak.

This regulation is a good first step of forcing companies to think about the consequences of having data.

> As a German, I'd like to have more transparency into the backroom deals that are done in Berlin and Brussels

Same. I want a lot of transparency including from my own government. I'm however going to accept any positive development and won't demand them to be in a certain order :P

There are a lot of people who are trying to shape the EU into a better institution. It's not perfect but it's a pretty good start.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#94

Post by antoncohen »

I encourage a little more thought before cheering this on as a win. While GDPR isn't as ridiculous as the Cookie Law, it still shows that the EU/EC don't understand the technology they are trying to regulate, and it comes at a huge cost to tech companies.

Take the right to be forgotten. First of all, it should be common sense that no one has the right to force legitimate news articles to disappear because they don't like the content, but that is what the EU has ruled should happen.

I get the desire to have a company forget about you, and remove all the personal information they have. It makes sense from a personal standpoint. But how do you do it technically?

If you follow GDPR strictly you would need to be able to purge the data from your backups. Now most backups are considered immutable, so you aren't going to do that, meaning you need a way to ensure that "forgotten" users never get restored.

But how do you even delete the live data? Does the tech company you work for have the ability to delete all traces of a user from their system, cleaning severing all relationships with other objects in your system? Do you have the ability to retrieve everything you know about a specific user, and provide it to them? You will need to write the code to do this.

There is a good chance your little startup that isn't cash flow positive will have to spend $1 million of its VC money on becoming GDPR compliant.

Do you sell a SaaS service to businesses, and those businesses send you their customer's data? Then you are the processor and they are the controller. Cool, less for you to do, sort of. Except that controller must agree to every sub-processor you use. Want to switch from AWS to GCP? You can only do it if all your customers agree. Want to use try out a new metrics or logging service? If it will have any PII you can't do it without customer (controller) permission.

You will basically need to hire full-time compliance officers to deal with this. The big tech companies already have compliance officers, but GDPR is so massively invasive to businesses that even small companies now need compliance officers.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#95

Post by nvarsj »

antoncohen wrote: post #94

I encourage a little more thought before cheering this on as a win. While GDPR isn't as ridiculous as the Cookie Law, it still shows that the EU/EC don't understand the technology they are trying to regulate, and it comes at a huge cost to tech companies. Take the right to be forgotten . First of all, it should be common sense that no one has the right to force legitimate news articles to disappear because they don't…

> it comes at a huge cost to tech companies

Doesn't it just affect companies which rely heavily on lack of privacy for monetisation? I think that's sort of the point - that your business should not rely on tracking individuals and selling that information without their consent to gov/private bodies. It's obviously a huge change, since so many big tech players rely on this to make profits. But the internet will be a much nicer place for everyone else if right to privacy is protected.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#96

Post by austinheap »

Nala_Alan wrote: post #86
Sephr wrote: post #31

The author believes that users have little incentive to allow Google to provide personalized Google Search results. I don't think any technical-oriented people in this thread would agree that they have "little incentive" to allow Google Search personalization. When I turn off Google Search personalization, I get inferior search results that are less likely to be what I was searching for. If you don't want your result…

I don't even use Google, I use my own searx instance instead. Completely unpersonalized, and completely private. And I feel that it's better this way, cause privacy does matter.

I just use my old Britannica CDs. Completely private.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#97

Post by bflesch »

antoncohen wrote: post #94

I encourage a little more thought before cheering this on as a win. While GDPR isn't as ridiculous as the Cookie Law, it still shows that the EU/EC don't understand the technology they are trying to regulate, and it comes at a huge cost to tech companies. Take the right to be forgotten . First of all, it should be common sense that no one has the right to force legitimate news articles to disappear because they don't…

Thanks for phrasing your concerns about this regulation in such a nice way. I tried to articulate it in an earlier post but it was very controversially received.

Overall, this will be yet another additional challenge for EU-based startups in comparison with their US peers and keep armies of lawyers busy.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#98

Post by shock »

kobeya wrote: post #74
tombrossman wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has assets within the EU which means ignoring EU laws is not an option, unless Google are prepared to forfeit those assets. It's not really a decision they have the authority to make anyhow. Imagine the shareholder lawsuits!

Shareholders filing lawsuits because the company refused to give away money to a fine?

I'm assuming shareholders filing lawsuits because Google wouldn't be doing business in EU anymore.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#99

Post by wolco »

Sir_Substance wrote: post #90
bflesch wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is about ethics, it is about control. We as European businessmen were and still are unable to generate the same kind of innovation as the US, and now they try to solve the problem by pulling down the US on our level (at least the parts concerning the EU market). I think this is the wrong approach, EU should try to make it easier for European businesses to compete with US-based ones. But in the end we…

>We as European businessmen were and still are unable to generate the same kind of innovation as the US I don't want US innovation. Thanks for the offer.

Does that mean you avoid services like facebook or google? Many of those innovations are based on data collection and using that to make customer segments to sell targeted ads. Without that model you may be asked to pay a few dollars or see additional ads that are more likely to be less interesting.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#100

Post by austinheap »

bflesch wrote: post #97
antoncohen wrote: post #94

I encourage a little more thought before cheering this on as a win. While GDPR isn't as ridiculous as the Cookie Law, it still shows that the EU/EC don't understand the technology they are trying to regulate, and it comes at a huge cost to tech companies. Take the right to be forgotten . First of all, it should be common sense that no one has the right to force legitimate news articles to disappear because they don't…

Thanks for phrasing your concerns about this regulation in such a nice way. I tried to articulate it in an earlier post but it was very controversially received. Overall, this will be yet another additional challenge for EU-based startups in comparison with their US peers and keep armies of lawyers busy.

I just want to point out it keeps armies of US engineers employed too. The amount of work I've had for EU companies implementing their EU regulations as a US tech worker is confusing and funny.

This is just another opportunity for easy money if you're in the states and enjoy/don't mind compliance work.

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