Live data from Hacker News

Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today

techcrunch.com

61–70 of 326 posts

Re: Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today

#61
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a policymaker, but GDPR seems overly-reactionary, over-reaching, and not well thought-out. I think the negative unintended consequences are likely much greater than however much it actually protects the privacy of individuals (which I don't think will be much at all).

I don't think GDPR is flawless, but at some point if we don't do anything, privacy violations are going to become so common place and so entrenched in the online economy that we can't fix it anymore. At that point, the discussion would be all about all the "jobs we would destroy" and "businesses opportunities we would shut down!", and heavy lobbying would make sure it gets nowhere.

Do you think that the GDPR has really changed anything for either Facebook or its users? Do you think that anything changed in the way data is being handled? All i see is a bunch of highly paid law firms writing up 200 additional pages in terms and conditions to shield the company, but nothing really changed as far as daily business is concerned.

Re: Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today

#62
post #22

If anything, this kind of regulation helps companies like Facebook keep their "monopoly", because it raises the monetary cost of starting a competitor. A number of smaller services and games have shut down due to increased cost of compliance, even for companies that don't have any privacy issues.

What alternative do you propose? The free market obviously fails to address privacy issues, I don't see how anything besides stricter regulation can help the affected people here.

Decrease the cost of compliance by communicating super-clearly.

- The UK ICO's Guide to the GDPR is a good step. Kudos to those who got the budget passed to do that. https://ico.org.uk/for-organisations/guide-to-the-general-da...

- Produce clear example cases before things are litigated. That way, you don't run into the problem of "Well, nobody really knows how things are going to shake out and people are trying to stay in the middle of the pack in terms of compliance" (Which is what I heard from an entrepreneur at a panel at Slaughter & May)

- Hire someone to write The Manga Guide to GDPR Compliance, in the style of https://nostarch.com/mg_databases.htm Or in the style of http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1585.

- Post video courses with the same sort of content.

Part of the problem here is that law firms have a strong incentive to publish SEO-optimised content which proclaims that compliance is difficult and confusing and that you should hire an expert law firm.

Re: Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today

#63

If anything, this kind of regulation helps companies like Facebook keep their "monopoly", because it raises the monetary cost of starting a competitor. A number of smaller services and games have shut down due to increased cost of compliance, even for companies that don't have any privacy issues.

Someone who runs a club recently told me he was moving all comms to Facebook because of the GDPR. He says that means that he is not collecting user data only Facebook is and so he doesn't have to worry about GDPR things. This is a bit awkward for me since I don't use Facebook.

He's going to find himself in for a shock. The platform he chooses to store data on is irrelevant, if he's processing that data then GDPR applies.

Re: Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today

#65

If anything, this kind of regulation helps companies like Facebook keep their "monopoly", because it raises the monetary cost of starting a competitor. A number of smaller services and games have shut down due to increased cost of compliance, even for companies that don't have any privacy issues.

In that case compliance and regulation should be run similar to the way the SEC runs it. There is a threshold and if you report AMU over say 5mn you are subject to tier 1 compliance, then tier 2 and so on. follow me?

Re: Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today

#67
post #12

Well, he made one friend [0], poor lady. [0] https://twitter.com/ceciliawikstrom/status/99898468946035916...

I feel much more sorry for the citizens of Sweden than I do for that "poor lady" who made a point of looking like Zuckerburg's tool. If Cecilia Wikström was my elected representative, I'd start investigating how to expatriate.

She is clearly pretty naive but that grilling is fairly harsh imho. At least on twitter she seems to have become the symbol of how the entire group of EU politicians messed up.

Re: Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Requiring consent as a pre-condition of a service is frowned upon under GDPR. If you have a legitimate requirement (which is fairly rigidly defined under GDPR) or legal obligations for that data then you don’t need user consent, but if you don’t then you need to offer the service regardless of the user consent or not.

> Requiring consent as a pre-condition of a service is frowned upon under GDPR. No, it's not. Requiring extraneous consent as a precondition of service, that is, requiring consent for some processing as a precondition of provision of a service that does not depend on that processing is an indication that consent is coerced rather than freely given, and hence not effective consent, under the GDPR. But what that means…

Requiring extraneous consent as a precondition of service, that is, requiring consent for some processing as a precondition of provision of a service that does not depend on that processing is an indication that consent is coerced rather than freely given, and hence not effective consent, under the GDPR.

But if the service does depend on that processing, then you don't need to ask for consent at all, so why would you? In practice, the statement is true.

Re: Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today

#69

If worst comes to worst and EU tries to break up Facebook — and it seems likely they might — what would be Facebook’s best path forward? Theoretically, would it send a stronger signal to US regulators if Facebook simply shut down all operation in the EU? A pop up message to all EU citizens along the lines of “You may no longer access Facebook from within the EU due to X Y and Z from your government. As such, all of y…

Just my impression: if this was Google, then yes. It is very hard to replace Google at this point in time.

Facebook is on its way out. Due to the network effect, Facebook will stay relevant for a long time. But if Facebook would leave the EU then it wouldn't take long for other social networks to take its place.

Facebook is relevant because everybody is on Facebook. Not because it is such a great service.

Personally, I am way more worried about Google.

Re: Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today

#70
post #61
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think GDPR is flawless, but at some point if we don't do anything, privacy violations are going to become so common place and so entrenched in the online economy that we can't fix it anymore. At that point, the discussion would be all about all the "jobs we would destroy" and "businesses opportunities we would shut down!", and heavy lobbying would make sure it gets nowhere.

Do you think that the GDPR has really changed anything for either Facebook or its users? Do you think that anything changed in the way data is being handled? All i see is a bunch of highly paid law firms writing up 200 additional pages in terms and conditions to shield the company, but nothing really changed as far as daily business is concerned.

Considering that GDPR is only in full effect after May 25th 2018, there is nothing to talk about in regards to its effect right now.
Post reply on HN