EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants • Hacker News Board

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#101

Post by eterevsky » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 10:30 AM UTC

kmlx wrote: post #97

eterevsky wrote: post #4

> EU officials have agreed on landmark rules I'm not sure what this means in terms of the timeline. Will it be voted for in European Parliament and if yes, when? To what extent this may be changed in the final edition? And if it's adopted as a law, how much of a grace period will the companies have?

lots of confusion in this comment. > Will it be voted for in European Parliament and if yes, when? the European Parliament only votes on a text. It cannot take decisions by itself. it can only present a voted upon text to the EU Council. and even then it's not a given it will become a directive. > And if it's adopted as a law There is no such thing as a "law" in the European Union. (Simplified) The EU has directives…

> lots of confusion in this comment.

That's why I'm asking these questions.

I still don't quite understand on which stage this initiative is at the moment and how long until it is enforced.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#102

Post by naoqj » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 10:30 AM UTC

ckastner wrote: post #95

naoqj wrote: post #45

It's so easy to destroy a sector when you have nothing to lose.

> It's so easy to destroy a sector when you have nothing to lose. The EU is choosing to favor acting on behalf of their people, rather than some sector. If that sector can't make money in ways that are not immoral with regards to the people, so be it. For example: Why shouldn't a 30%-fee walled garden be destroyed?

Because it's their corporation and they can do whatever they want with it, and because it's far from a monopoly since there are alternatives.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#103

Post by ChuckNorris89 » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 10:30 AM UTC

aspenmayer wrote: post #89

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Dumb money is not the basis for the web as we know it. It's not, but it's the basis of ad-driven, surveillance-ware, and user engagement optimized companies that drive the ludicrously high profits and wages in the US tech sector. Do you see US tech workers lining up to work for Canonical? Yeah, I thought so too.

Well once I saw their application, I wasn't interested in working at Canonical either. And I'm currently looking for work, for what it's worth. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30735678

I know that thread, that's why I used it as an example.

Hiring in tech is broken regardless, so most candidates optimize for compensation as that way at least the end result justifies the effort of going through those several stages of various hazing rituals each company has lined up.

And like the Canonical employee said in that thread, they receive 80% quality applications despite all of those shitty hoops Canonical makes you jump through even before they talk to you. So yeah, there seems to be no shortage of devs regardless of how bad a company's hiring practices are, as long as they're an established name and/or pay great.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#104

Post by thow-58d4e8b » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 10:31 AM UTC

drumhead wrote: post #73

mschuster91 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One reason the EU missed out on the internet is our unlimited willingness to be regulated. Bollocks. The key difference between here and the US is the simple fact that we don't have enormous amounts of "dumb money" from pension and hedge funds screaming to be invested into anything that remotely smells like it could be worth money one time - remember Yo! which got 1M funding?! - and then founders making big money a…

Why aren't they investing their "dumb money" in EU web start ups then?

Because in the US, money has nowhere else to go. Stocks? Wildly overpriced. Real estate? Wildly overpriced. Bonds? Zero returns. Mineral extraction? Risky outlook. Energy sector? Subsidies are likely on the horizon, better to wait. Infrastructure? NIMBYs

That's not the case for the EU. Money gets reasonable returns in energy sector, industry, any investment in Eastern Europe, tourism, PPP infrastructure projects, etc.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#105

Post by grishka » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 10:31 AM UTC

8fingerlouie wrote: post #63

grishka wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sadly, open standards also slow down the development of new features, as everybody needs to be "on board" for new features to roll out. Capability negotiation is a thing. It's perfectly fine to support some baseline feature set (one-to-one text messages) and build more optional features on top of it. But, yes, it's important that the protocol is designed to be extensible in the first place.

> It's perfectly fine to support some baseline feature set (one-to-one text messages) and build more optional features on top of it. So keep the status quo (SMS/MMS) and build more features on top of that ?

> the status quo (SMS/MMS)

There are countries that aren't the US. I honestly don't remember when was the last time I've actually sent an SMS. 99% of SMS messages I receive are notifications and 2fa codes. If anything, "status quo" over here is Telegram and VKontakte.

Besides, the issue with SMS/MMS is that it's a closed system tightly controlled by carriers. The internet is an open system.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#106

Post by yywwbbn » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 10:31 AM UTC

koonsolo wrote: post #66

FreeHugs wrote: post #8

One reason the EU missed out on the internet is our unlimited willingness to be regulated. And we keep piling more and more bureaucracy on top of it. This only cements the power of US big tech like Google and Facebook. And it sets the stage for the next big applications of the web all being build outside the EU as well. Here in Germany, everyone is afraid to start a web startup. And if they do, they spend endless amo…

Fellow EU entrepreneur here: you being downvoted says enough about what kind of people are commenting here. US works with a "better ask forgiveness than permission" model, where you are pretty free to do what you want, but people can sue you. EU works with the opposite: create rules and keep companies compliant with those rules. It's pretty obvious to see that the 1st model is very beneficial for startups and bootstr…

Are there any actual cases of EU startups being fined under GDPR without being given a chance to fix their stuff. I was under the impression that the enforcement so far has been pretty lenient.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#107

Post by pooper » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 10:31 AM UTC

8fingerlouie wrote: post #17

hrnnnnnn wrote: post #2

> Parliament also succeeded in convincing the Council of interoperability requirements for messaging services, meaning outfits such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms. For group chats, this requirement will be rolled out over a period of four years. This would be great. I remember using pidgin back in the day and it was really convenient…

> meaning outfits such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms The way i read it, they're calling for open standards, which can be a good thing. Sadly, open standards also slow down the development of new features, as everybody needs to be "on board" for new features to roll out. Take email (SMTP, IMAP, etc) as an example, where no major progr…

> Feel free to replace email for TCPv4/v6. The only successful open standard i can think of would be HTTP.

Btw, does anyone here remember off hand what happened to the "concern" the banking industry had with TLS 1.3?

My understanding is someone just came in at the last moment and basically wanted to change the entire design of TLS 1.3 because their workflow would no longer work because of forward secrecy.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12641880

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#108

Post by FartyMcFarter » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 10:36 AM UTC

agilob wrote: post #44

hrnnnnnn wrote: post #2

> Parliament also succeeded in convincing the Council of interoperability requirements for messaging services, meaning outfits such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger or iMessage will have to open up and interoperate with smaller messaging platforms. For group chats, this requirement will be rolled out over a period of four years. This would be great. I remember using pidgin back in the day and it was really convenient…

>interoperability requirements for messaging services, meaning outfits such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger Who will be decrypting WA and Signal message to pass them to Facebook Messanger?

There's no need for decryption. If you want to send things to Facebook Messenger, you can just send it to that service directly.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#109

Post by trh0awayman » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 10:38 AM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #71

trh0awayman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say most people don't agonize over it because most people don't follow GDPR here in Germany. I think more and more people are slowly complying, but certainly in the last 3 years no one has cared. I personally believe GDPR will never be properly enforced and most people will ignore it. The easy parts of GDPR (cookies, fonts, I guess CDNs now) are automatically detectable, and the hard parts (deletion of data,…

> But every single citizen has to inform the government where they live and their religion. You also have to inform your boss of your religion. That depends on the religion. For a bit more context (read the full history in [1]): As part of the 1800s separation between state and church, the major ones (Catholic and Evangelic-Lutheran) got the right to a percentage of employed people's wages as a sort of "membership fe…

I understand that it's related to taxes and that it's not exclusive to Germany (that's just the one I'm most familiar with). But there are better ways to do this that don't involve the government or my employer. These things violate my personal privacy far beyond what an advertising company does, or at least have an actual effect on my life.

I also think you're massively underestimating how much people care, especially in an increasingly secular Europe, even in very liberal cities like Berlin. And in small companies, there is no HR.

Re: EU negotiators agree new rules to rein in tech giants

#110

Post by kmlx » Fri, Mar 25, 2022, 10:39 AM UTC

nonrandomstring wrote: post #86

This has to extend to business as well as consumer use. Give people the power to choose technology in all contexts. That's all we need. You use Zoom, Teams, Facebook or whatever you like, I'll use my Jitsi or home grown WebRTC solution. Fairness can be that simple. But interoperability legislation can only go so far to fixing things because we also need to tackle: - Regulator and institutional capture by vendor lobby…

> You use Zoom, Teams, Facebook or whatever you like, I'll use my Jitsi or home grown WebRTC solution. Fairness can be that simple.

that's naive. the problem is that we moved away as an industry from that model for 2 specific reasons:

- widely used standards take decades to change just slightly, or never (see SMS, email)

- interoperability means either lowest common denominator or a huge cost to keep things interoperable

both are horrible for innovation, both are a killer for funding, both pull money away from other things.

all for giving "jitsi" or your "home grown webrtc solution" a reason to exist.

meanwhile apps like zoom simply took everyone by storm during covid even thou lots and lots of others (including webrtc and jitsi) existed for a long time.