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.
Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today
61–70 of 326 posts
Re: Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today
#62If 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.
- 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
#63If 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.
Re: Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today
#64https://twitter.com/CeciliaWikstrom/status/99898468946035916...
(Zuckerberg posing with a Swedish MEP, all smiles.)
Re: Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today
#65If 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.
Re: Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today
#66Re: Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today
#67Well, 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.
Re: Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today
#68Earlier 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…
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
#69If 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…
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
#70Earlier 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.