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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

#321

Post by fixermark »

AriaMinaei wrote: post #271

While I see some of the concerns about the _technicality_ of the law as completely legitimate, it still bothers me that so many people reject the whole spirit of this law, and cannot put the negative of "tax on startups" against the much greater good of personal privacy. I've just started a business myself, and this regulation affects my company too. It makes development costlier; it'll take from the precious little…

Possibly because personal privacy as a "much greater good" is open to debate. People place wildly differing values on that property.

Google's current ecosystem of data-sharing means that Assistant can make educated context guesses on what I mean when I talk to it based on my browser history and map navigation history. If the new privacy constraints damage that passive interconnection, that's not a net good for me.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#322

Post by fixermark »

amelius wrote: post #286
throwaway_9123 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throwaway account. I have national sales responsibilities for one of the majors. Think IBM/Microsoft/Oracle/etc leading a sales team of 74 reps. You'd be surprised at how LITTLE sales we've generated from GDPR. We've been providing free GDPR assessments for the past 1.5 years for over 200 accounts as lead gen opportunity and very little sales have resulted. It all boils down to companies simply don't believe the fine…

> It all boils down to companies simply don't believe the fines will be enforced given just how expensive the fines are. It sounds like a goldmine for the EU government. If they install a group of people chasing for noncompliant companies, they will pay for themselves.

And with most of the major tech players being American companies, well...

No war except economic war. ;)

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#323

Post by pimmen »

kobeya wrote: post #273
rbjorklin wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will probably lose a billion customers?

THAT is the harm. That's my point. You can't sue someone for something that abstractly maybe implies something else. You sue for damages and have to show damages.

If the CEO does something that drastic, the share holders can ansolutely sue him or her because the CEO doesn't have the authority. You reckon the owner of a bus company won't fire and sue a bus driver who does something stupid that could endanger many lives?

The key point is; it's not the CEO's company. He works for a pay check, the share holders invest for long term profits. Big difference.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#324

Post by closeparen »

AriaMinaei wrote: post #271

While I see some of the concerns about the _technicality_ of the law as completely legitimate, it still bothers me that so many people reject the whole spirit of this law, and cannot put the negative of "tax on startups" against the much greater good of personal privacy. I've just started a business myself, and this regulation affects my company too. It makes development costlier; it'll take from the precious little…

I wonder how this will interact with accounting standards. Ledgers have historically been immutable. If I buy something from you and then demand deletion of my data, do you need to revise all previous financial statements to make it appear as if the transaction never occurred?

The spirit of the law is nonsensical. It makes all commercial activity illegal, to the extent that all businesses keep records of their sales, inventory, etc. which reflect the activities of their customers, employees, and suppliers.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#325

Post by AndrewKemendo »

bad_user wrote: post #224
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll eat my shoe if a regulator ever gets even 2% total global revenue out of any of the top 100 software companies based on this. In reality a bunch of small shops are going to go bankrupt because they don't have a "GDPR implementation" position filled and they didn't do some report properly.

The EU just fined Google €2.42 billion in an antitrust settlement for manipulating search results. Go get the salt.

Completely different scenario - But even if it was similar they are fighting it hard [1] so I doubt they will end up paying anything close to that.

[1]http://fortune.com/2017/07/10/google-eu-fine-lawyers/

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#326

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

closeparen wrote: post #324
AriaMinaei wrote: post #271

While I see some of the concerns about the _technicality_ of the law as completely legitimate, it still bothers me that so many people reject the whole spirit of this law, and cannot put the negative of "tax on startups" against the much greater good of personal privacy. I've just started a business myself, and this regulation affects my company too. It makes development costlier; it'll take from the precious little…

I wonder how this will interact with accounting standards. Ledgers have historically been immutable. If I buy something from you and then demand deletion of my data, do you need to revise all previous financial statements to make it appear as if the transaction never occurred? The spirit of the law is nonsensical. It makes all commercial activity illegal, to the extent that all businesses keep records of their sales,…

Accounting info must not be modified. This does not change that. Same way you can't demand deletion from credit reporting data.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#327

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

fixermark wrote: post #321
AriaMinaei wrote: post #271

While I see some of the concerns about the _technicality_ of the law as completely legitimate, it still bothers me that so many people reject the whole spirit of this law, and cannot put the negative of "tax on startups" against the much greater good of personal privacy. I've just started a business myself, and this regulation affects my company too. It makes development costlier; it'll take from the precious little…

Possibly because personal privacy as a "much greater good" is open to debate. People place wildly differing values on that property. Google's current ecosystem of data-sharing means that Assistant can make educated context guesses on what I mean when I talk to it based on my browser history and map navigation history. If the new privacy constraints damage that passive interconnection, that's not a net good for me.

Then opt into collection. This does not disallow that.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#328

Post by the_mitsuhiko »

logicchains wrote: post #312
majewsky wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make it sound as though the majority of Facebook users were making a conscious decision to trade personal information, whereas the usual thought process is "it's free! and everyone's doing it!".

Most people simply don't care. It constantly surprises me how paranoid people in the technology community are about their social interaction and browsing data.

Normal people absolutely care. They however do not have the tools or know how to.

Just look at how many people were behind the facebook lawsuits in Europe to see that those are not developers.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#329

Post by simonh »

emn13 wrote: post #305
RivieraKid wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really doubt that these companies would lose more than 4% revenue by complying. Worse ad-targeting in the EU is not worth that much.

I'm not so sure. And it's not just ad-targetting - all kinds of personalized stuff and simply general purpose data mining suffer too. And don't forget that they wouldn't get the full 4% immediately; and would likely be fined much less than once per year based on current trends anyhow. So that 4% is going to be further diluted.

That's not what has happened so far. The search Engine Results fine of €2.4bn was based on the length and severity of past infringement and they were threatened with a $10m per day fine, equivalent to 5% of global revenue, on an ongoing basis if they didn't comply within 90 days. So they absolutely have been hit with a heavy lump sum fine from day one.

There's no need to theorise about how the EU might enforce such laws, we've got actual examples of them enforcing laws like this already and they do not mess around.

Re: How the GDPR Will Disrupt Google and Facebook

#330

Post by Silhouette »

Slartie wrote: post #310
Silhouette wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could shut down all their European operations, but that would cost them a lot more than 4% of revenue. There's an interesting assumption in there, and I'm not entirely sure it's a correct one. Facebook and its subsidiaries play a large part in many people's everyday lives now, in particular forming the main way a lot of people stay in touch with their friends and family. It is not at all clear to me what would h…

Laws don't change in a matter of one or two days. So if they did this shutdown with the argument being that they otherwise can't offer their service in a legal way, it would have to be a permanent shutdown (or at least on a scale of several months, until the law is changed), because everything else would effectively result in openly admitting that they are knowingly running an illegal service. If that happens, how lo…

Laws don't change in a matter of one or two days.

True enough, but assuming they decided to pull the stunt before the new laws came into effect, which isn't until the middle of next year, the real question is whether public opinion could be shifted in so little time.

In most cases, I'd say that was extremely optimistic. However, in this case we're talking about a service used by probably a large majority of voters across Europe, often for considerable time every day and for communications and arrangements that matter to them personally. "If they don't change this, you'll lose Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp" is sure to get some people's attention, and all of those services going dark would probably make the front page of major news outlets. There would certainly be a lot of discussion; in fact, it might be a doubly effective move, because a lot of people would immediately then realise that without those services their main ways of telling their friends about something wasn't working.

If that happens, how long do you think it will take a bunch of companies to spin up replacements for Facebook? [...] Thus, there would be a timeframe in which a huge number of new social networks would try to win over a critical amount of users, with one of them eventually emerging as the dominant one.

I'm not sure that's how things would play out, if Facebook really did go offline permanently in Europe because of this. It would take vast resources to operate a social network on the scale of Facebook, but more importantly, before you could even start, the first thing you'd have to do is figure out how to comply with the same EU data protection rules and presumably then you'd also have to convince some serious investors that you could do it. If Facebook had already failed in that -- because obviously Facebook isn't just going to surrender the entire EU market and all its advertising revenue without a very good reason -- then why would we expect any new social network without all of Facebook's advantages to be able to comply if it was otherwise operating on the same basis, i.e., free to use but ad-supported?

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