Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 553 posts

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#111

Post by briffle »

nabnob wrote: post #52

I see a lot of comments deriding this law, can someone explain to me why these are bad things? Quoting from this article - https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/landmark-california-privac... - Businesses must disclose what information they collect, what business purpose they do so for and any third parties they share that data with. - Businesses would be required to comply with official consumer requests to delete that d…

I see a lot of comments deriding this law, can someone explain to me why these are bad things?

Jeff Hammerbacher: ‘The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads… That sucks.’

Those best minds are now having to change the way they generate revenue..

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#112

Post by jjuhl »

bsder wrote: post #55
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDPR is not a difficult law to comply with for an EU company, unless you're adtech.

We've already had this discussion. We've already seen non-adtech companies simply shut down EU access if they don't have enough revenue. That's probably not a good thing. I support the GDPR, but complying with it is far from simple and the jurisprudence is not yet clear.

"We've already seen non-adtech companies simply shut down EU access if they don't have enough revenue. That's probably not a good thing." - Why not? I suspect we can live happily without them.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#113

Post by nabnob »

kelnos wrote: post #79
jakelazaroff wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am on board with this law, but I’m curious how these two points will shake out: > - Consumers can opt out of their data being sold, and businesses can’t retaliate by changing the price or level of service. > - Businesses can, however, offer “financial incentives” for being allowed to collect data. Seems to me that it’s a distinction without a difference. Is there something I’m missing?

It might be a matter of semantics? You can quote a standard price, and then give a discount for allowing data collection, but you can't quote a standard price, and then add a surcharge for disallowing data collection. I agree that there is no practical difference between the two, but given how deceptive companies can be when disclosing various pricing and hidden fees, this might be an attempt to curb that behavior?

There's definitely a difference in outcomes between

1) allowing customers to opt-in to data collection by giving a them reward. In this case, the default behavior does not involve data collection

2) allowing customers to opt out of data collection by paying a penalty. In this case, the default behavior involves data collection.

People usually don't bother to opt out.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#114

Post by criddell »

ohduran wrote: post #30
criddell wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you imagine owning a grocery store and having to ask every customer their nationality For privacy matters it's easy though. The UN has declared that privacy is a human right for all humans in all countries.

The UN has no way to enforce anything. It comes down to individual countries in the end, and sometimes that's too general.

Sure, but the valley companies in the article (and their employees) wouldn't be afraid if they didn't routinely engage in human rights violations.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#115

Post by ubercow13 »

wolco wrote: post #69
ohduran wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Imagine if you said the same thing with taxes. "Gee, why do I have to pay taxes differently in every country?" Well, because that's what you have to do if you want to do business there. You're not forced to do anything in here if you don't want to; if the opportunity is worthy, others will take your place. Same with the laws, especially those that remove agency from the users.

But you don't. If I am from South Africa and I buy a US product from a smaller website I don't pay South Africa sales taxes. If I buy from Amazon I would because they have offices or a physical presence. When you buy a product from a website hosted/incorporated in a different country you are literally going into another country and buying a product under their laws. Your local taxes (national/stat wide/city wide) sho…

You don’t pay US sales tax, though. You should probably be paying South Africa sales tax? You would have to if importing into the U.K. at least

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#116

Post by taurath »

jassmith87 wrote: post #92
jakelazaroff wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am on board with this law, but I’m curious how these two points will shake out: > - Consumers can opt out of their data being sold, and businesses can’t retaliate by changing the price or level of service. > - Businesses can, however, offer “financial incentives” for being allowed to collect data. Seems to me that it’s a distinction without a difference. Is there something I’m missing?

Its intended to fuck over Facebook. If you're charging for a service you can simply offer a discount for allowing data collection after bumping prices for everyone by the same amount, Facebook however isn't charging. Facebook can't offer a discount on free, and they can't just force only users who opt-out to go pay (because that falls afoul of the first quote you put). Basically this puts Facebook in a real tight sit…

Opt-out for GDPR is under 1%. Most people don't care at the moment, sadly.

However, a mass movement to opt-out would absolutely affect them. This lays the groundwork for that, and thats what they should be afraid of.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#117

Post by noodlesUK »

gedy wrote: post #49
purple_ducks wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can you imagine owning a grocery store and having to ask every customer their nationality to check which law you must follow to do business with them Can you imagine a grocery chain who wants to profit from potential customers all over the world but doesn't want to obey local laws in the jurisdictions it operates in? If people don't want to serve people outside their jurisdiction, do an IP lookup as some US outlets…

It's more like an international customer calling a US business on the telephone and placing an order. That's not 'serving outside their jurisdiction'.

Yeah, and you know what, if I called Walmart and tried to buy half the groceries they sell to then resell to UK customers, I’d probably end up paying massive fines or even in prison. I can’t source products that don’t comply with the law, even if they are legal where I bought them. I can probably get away with it for personal use, but there isn’t free movement of goods like that.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#118

Post by dangus »

mahmoudimus wrote: post #109
nabnob wrote: post #52

I see a lot of comments deriding this law, can someone explain to me why these are bad things? Quoting from this article - https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/landmark-california-privac... - Businesses must disclose what information they collect, what business purpose they do so for and any third parties they share that data with. - Businesses would be required to comply with official consumer requests to delete that d…

I think the idea is that regulation always has unexpected side effects, some of which can be abused to actually do the perverse inverse of what they're intended to protect against. This is intuitive because regulation + law can really put a competitive barrier for established incumbents who (and arguably, they would be the target for lawsuits here) have resources to implement and comply with these regulations. The la…

On the flip side, the downsides of regulations don’t outweigh their utility.

We don’t scrap seatbelt and airbag regulations just because they’ve had some unintended side effects.

Regulations aren’t set in stone forever, either, and a functional legislative body can always modify and update them as their effects become more well known.

Or, well, maybe I sound too idealistic. But...I think most of us can all agree that consumer data protections are highly lacking.

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#119

Post by simplecomplex »

bengale wrote: post #100
simplecomplex wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing, except soon there will be annoying legalese on every website form. Just like the GDPR. Large businesses will benefit at the expense of smaller ones. Lawyers will make more money selling these legalese templates, and sometimes when a big company doesn’t pay the right bean counter they’ll end up being investigated by regulators, and paying the state money to continue doing the same thing. But it will be celebr…

The GDPR does a lot to protect user data. As someone that’s implemented stuff at a huge company for GDPR and at my startup, it was waaaay harder at the larger company. The ICO has been beyond helpful with the few questions I’ve had recently and implementation for my startup has been fairly straightforward.

“The GDPR does a lot to protect user data”

As you proceed to state absolutely nothing. Before GDPR my information was in a bunch of databases managed by other people. After GDPR my information is in the same databases managed by the same people. Except now they have legalese stating this totally fucking obvious fact.

Before GDPR if my information was hacked and used to hurt me, the business was not liable. After GDPR they still are not liable. Oh and if they violate the GDPR the state gets money, but the victims don’t. Such amazing protection of consumer data...

Re: Silicon Valley is terrified of California’s privacy law

#120

Post by JohnFen »

aeternum wrote: post #102
nabnob wrote: post #52

I see a lot of comments deriding this law, can someone explain to me why these are bad things? Quoting from this article - https://techcrunch.com/2018/06/28/landmark-california-privac... - Businesses must disclose what information they collect, what business purpose they do so for and any third parties they share that data with. - Businesses would be required to comply with official consumer requests to delete that d…

I don't think lawmakers have thought through the ramifications. Here are a few: Way too hard to enforce, the definition of 'customer data' is going to be a constantly moving target. Does every click count? How about aggregated clicks important for general product optimization? What constitutes 'selling' user data? Very few companies actually sell your data, instead they place ads based on your data. Will that be bann…

> Will that be banned as well?

I sure hope so.

> Many companies, including Google would have to significantly change their pricing model if so

Good. It would be even better if they have to change their business model.

Post reply on HN