Zuckerberg didn’t make any friends in Europe today • Hacker News Board

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

#171

Post by rusk » Wed, May 23, 2018, 9:27 AM UTC

akie wrote: post #163

tingol wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But there's no way to way to fight back for Europe unless EU countries get even more homogeneous laws concerning running a multi-national (basically any online) business. It's easy in the US because they have a large, wealthy and boundary free market with almost no access cost beyond marketing.

Also, they all speak the same language. That's huge.

Pretty much everyone in Europe that operates in any kind of a pan-European business space speaks English. Kind of ironic these days really ...

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

#172

Post by akie » Wed, May 23, 2018, 9:28 AM UTC

sparkling wrote: post #152

matlock wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should really do your research before saying things like "stop passing silly laws regulating the form of cucumbers" https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/straight-cucumbers/ This was to make it clearer across all Markets what products you buy to make a single market easier on everyone. This is just FUD that really shouldn't be part of this conversation.

It's not FUD, its not a myth, its real: Commission Regulation (EEC) No 1677/88 of 15 June 1988 laying down quality standards for cucumbers [1] Yes i know this regulation is no longer in place, thats not the point. The point is that the EU is a overblown bureaucracy that should not be in charge of regulating every silly little aspect of life across the various member states. And yes, they are STILL passing laws like t…

> Recently they passed regulation that limits the power consumption over regular vacuum cleaners.

So why do you think laws like this are irrelevant?

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

#173

Post by LloydPickering » Wed, May 23, 2018, 9:31 AM UTC

repolfx wrote: post #121

raverbashing wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you're not wrong in spirit, it seems the current UK government (and its opposition) also downplay the major concerns of people. And I do agree with some of the concerns. (See Corbyn downplaying grooming gangs, antisemitism, etc and see the current gov ignoring the economic impact of Brexit)

Well, Corbyn has been taking a beating because of what he's ignoring. At this point in the electoral cycle Labour should be well ahead of the Conservatives. They should have cleaned up in the last round of council elections. Neither happened, and it's partly because Corbyn is seen as ignoring those sorts of things. Meanwhile the current government isn't ignoring the economic impact. So far there has been none - the e…

The Governor of the Bank of England disagrees with you that there has not been an economic impact yet. His estimates are that we have lost possibly as much as 2% of GDP as a result of the vote. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-44207677

I'd also point out that last year in the first 3Qs the UK grew its economy, true, but at by far the slowest rate of any of the G7 countries indicating we are lagging behind. Not all of that can be definitively put at the feet of Brexit of course. https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-economy-performanc...

I don't think the government is actively ignoring the economy, I just think they are hamstrung by the clear divisions in the nation (and indeed their party) as to whether we pursue a hard Brexit, or a Brexit in name only.

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

#174

Post by brandonsometig » Wed, May 23, 2018, 9:32 AM UTC

sparkling wrote: post #152

matlock wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should really do your research before saying things like "stop passing silly laws regulating the form of cucumbers" https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/straight-cucumbers/ This was to make it clearer across all Markets what products you buy to make a single market easier on everyone. This is just FUD that really shouldn't be part of this conversation.

It's not FUD, its not a myth, its real: Commission Regulation (EEC) No 1677/88 of 15 June 1988 laying down quality standards for cucumbers [1] Yes i know this regulation is no longer in place, thats not the point. The point is that the EU is a overblown bureaucracy that should not be in charge of regulating every silly little aspect of life across the various member states. And yes, they are STILL passing laws like t…

Classifying produce only helps the consumer. You'd be a little annoyed if every week you went to the supermarket and they had a varying quality/size of produce but the price remained the same.

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

#175

Post by mikejb » Wed, May 23, 2018, 9:34 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #164

sparkling wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not FUD, its not a myth, its real: Commission Regulation (EEC) No 1677/88 of 15 June 1988 laying down quality standards for cucumbers [1] Yes i know this regulation is no longer in place, thats not the point. The point is that the EU is a overblown bureaucracy that should not be in charge of regulating every silly little aspect of life across the various member states. And yes, they are STILL passing laws like t…

All that law does is standardize various classes. It's a extremely common measure for facilitating trade, e.g. https://www.ams.usda.gov/grades-standards/cucumber-grades-an... https://www.unece.org/fileadmin/DAM/trade/agr/standard/fresh...

I guess the Facebook post he got his info from didn't mention that.

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

#176

Post by Mediterraneo10 » Wed, May 23, 2018, 9:36 AM UTC

jonathanstrange wrote: post #143

repolfx wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's both. Verhofstadt is a full-blown European federalist (people who want Europe to be united under a single government and single flag). The fortunes of that dream have not been good lately, and he's looking for people to blame that aren't people like himself. I find it pathetic. Verhofstadt and people like him are one of the things that turned me off the EU and turned me into a Brexit voter. They routinely descri…

Well, I'm also a full-blown federalist, although I understand very well why people don't like the idea. I'm still hoping to be able to hold a genuine European passport in my hand that states "European" as nationality and "German" as mother tongue. Here is the main reason why I favour a genuine union with a partially joint military, a strengthened power for the European Parliament, and less power for appointed commiss…

> The people who actually advance culture have practically always been international cosmopolitans and humanists.

That claim is hard to square with the literary canons of a number of European peoples, the creations that these people consider the bedrock of their culture and which are exported around the world as what that respective people has to contribute to humankind. You'll find that these canons are to a large extent dominated by nationalists, especially in the wake of 1848. Sándor Petöfi, Mihai Eminescu, Taras Shevchenko, and Elias Lönnrot were not international cosmopolitans, at least not in their literary activity.

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

#177

Post by veddox » Wed, May 23, 2018, 9:36 AM UTC

amarkov wrote: post #72

thebradbain wrote: post #55

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…

I imagine US regulators would be on Facebook's side there. The US can't really tolerate a world where the EU purports to reach inside American borders and forcibly reorganize American companies.

The US have no qualms about regulating European companies, so they shouldn't complain. Just recently they were trying to keep Europeans out of Iran to enforce their unilateral sanctions...

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

#178

Post by icebraining » Wed, May 23, 2018, 9:37 AM UTC

zerostar07 wrote: post #120

icebraining wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not yet, it'll take a few lawsuits. See the work of Max Schrems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems https://www.fbclaim.com

Apparently they are already GDPR compliant (FB). In their case it's actually easy to justify their legitimate interest because their entire business is the handling of private data. Ironically, even though GDPR is supposed to affect things like facebook more, it changes very little about the way they work.

Whether their business model is handling data is irrelevant; they must ask for consent to use that data for ads and such - and that's even if they already have collected the data to provide a service requested by the user.

They recently came out with a new screen asking users to consent to a bunch of things, so they weren't compliant until then, and I wouldn't bet they are now.

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

#179

Post by sparkling » Wed, May 23, 2018, 9:37 AM UTC

iknowstuff wrote: post #103

sparkling wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Destroying democracies"? Oh please. Im pretty sure the fall of the EU has little to do with Facebook. Maybe these EU officials should look at their own parlament for blame for once. Perhaps stop robbing your people by artificially devaluing your currency, stop the influx of illegal refugees into the welfare states, stop passing silly laws regulating the form of cucumbers etc. - i could go on and on.

You are the reason we need to fight fake news. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/may/11/boris-johns...

You realize that this article actually does state: Yes, they ARE regulating power consumption of vacuum cleaners.

Apparently you think it is a good idea for some bureaucrats in Brussel to regulate power consumption of vacuums - if you believe that, fine with me, your opinion.

But its not "fake news" or FUD. Its real.

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

#180

Post by NLips » Wed, May 23, 2018, 9:38 AM UTC

sparkling wrote: post #152

matlock wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should really do your research before saying things like "stop passing silly laws regulating the form of cucumbers" https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/straight-cucumbers/ This was to make it clearer across all Markets what products you buy to make a single market easier on everyone. This is just FUD that really shouldn't be part of this conversation.

It's not FUD, its not a myth, its real: Commission Regulation (EEC) No 1677/88 of 15 June 1988 laying down quality standards for cucumbers [1] Yes i know this regulation is no longer in place, thats not the point. The point is that the EU is a overblown bureaucracy that should not be in charge of regulating every silly little aspect of life across the various member states. And yes, they are STILL passing laws like t…

It's _better_ for the EU to define these things. If the EU hasn't done it centrally, member states would be doing it individually. This way:

1) You get a single definition of cucumber class 2C for every country, rather than a bunch of definitions that make trade more complex 2) It's (num_countries_in_EU) times cheaper to do it once than to do it seperately for every single country.

It has become quite clear to me that anyone who brings up the shape of bananas or cucumbers in the EU is either just spreading FUD because they've decided they're against the EU for other reasons, or believes anything the papers tell them without applying critical thinking to the matter.